


The Boys who Lived

by AnOctoberPepper



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Baby Harry, Drama, Fluff and Angst, Redemption, Slice of Life, Werewolf
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-08-07 11:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16407308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOctoberPepper/pseuds/AnOctoberPepper
Summary: Lily Potter died less than two weeks ago, so when her idiot younger brother shows up on Severus's front porch holding Harry and pleading for a babysitter, Severus may just get pulled into an agreement that could change everything.





	1. A Knock at the Door

Severus replaced his spoon into his can of cold soup. It was a revolting congealed glob, but it was food, or at least a close approximation. What he wanted was a large Hogwarts feast; warm rolls and plates of succulent meat followed by desserts that were sweet enough to rot one's teeth on contact, but that wasn't to be. At least not until next year, Severus thought bitterly to himself.

Dumbledore wanted him to take old Slughorn's position after he retired at the end of the year. The Headmaster had just mentioned it the day before. Severus was to come by the school a few times a week to be trained to take the position, and he wasn't looking forward to it. But, with the end of the war, and Severus's promise, Dumbledore wanted to babysit him, and that would be easier if he were right under the old man's broken nose.

Severus sulked as he kneeled down on the floor, set the can of food aside and began to rummage through the next box of books he had carted from his last home in London. He had, against his better judgment, returned to Spinner's End. He couldn't decide how much he disliked this arrangement, but his parents had left the house to him, and now that the Dark Lord had fallen he had no connections and no chance of keeping an income, at least not until the brutal discrimination against those who had been on trial for connected crimes ended. For now, he would stay hidden in his childhood home.

Severus checked the binding on his Advanced Potions books, setting them in order, then slipped them onto the shelf closest to the floor. The higher up shelves were already full and he hadn't had a chance to clear them out or reorganize them. Under the Advanced Potions books, the box held some of his Defense Against the Dark Arts books. He wanted them on a higher shelf. He looked up for space but his search was cut short by a sudden rapping at the door.

He didn't look up; no one stopping by his home would be welcomed. They were either looking for his parents or looking for someone who no longer existed; Severus the Hogwarts Student or Severus the Death Eater. Now that he was just Severus the pet of Albus Dumbledore, no one would need to visit him.

He pulled a few potions ingredients and a few small notebooks from the box. He sighed, put the ingredients, back into the box and levitated it to the kitchen. The rapping on the door intensified, followed by someone desperately calling out his first name. That was odd in and of itself. He was so rarely called Severus. Then as he listened more closely, he realized that the voice sounded familiar, distant and from a dream, but familiar. He couldn't place it. Instead he dropped the box on the counter, walked back to the living room and pulled another box toward himself. This one was similarly filled with books, but darker ones, ones that would have been shuffled to the restricted section of the Hogwarts Library, but would fit into the Spinner's End library quite nicely. The knocking turned to fist pounding, and still, Severus ignored it.

"Severus," the voice was scratchy, pleading, "please? I heard your parents died, they gave you the house? I guess? Are you here? Sev!" The door handle rattled, and Severus looked up from his work. Who would know that information? Few Death Eaters knew or cared who his parents were, fewer Hogwarts students did. None would call him "Sev."

The voice sent ice shivering down his spine. Why was the voice so familiar, why was it making him so cold?

"Severus, I need your help, please just open the door." There was pounding again, heavy, imploring. The voice was joined with a few muffled cries, high pitched and angry. Severus flinched, feeling as if he had been burned. Those were the cries of a baby. He bolted to his feet and retreated into his kitchen, as far away from the front door as he could be.

His body knew who was at the door, even if his mind hadn't caught up. He could still hear the pounding and he was backed as far into the counter as he could be without climbing onto it. He shut his eyes and tried to block out the sound of Lily Evan's younger brother, and surely her son, at his front door.

What were they doing here?

Why!?

 

* * *

 

_Lily stumbled as she dashed out of the row of trees near her home in Cokeworth. Severus was on her heals and he heard a laugh erupt from her as they tumbled onto the green grass. She rolled over and looked back into the trees. Severus watched her green eyes for a moment then turned back to the tree line. Tyler should have been rushing out after them, short, and tripping over the roots as he chased._

_"Where is he then?" Severus wondered sitting up. Lily slowly stood again. This was the first time the boy had been allowed to follow them on one of their adventures after years of begging. They weren't particularly pleased. Severus tried to convince her to ditch him in the forest but Lily had been adamant that they keep an eye on him. The boy was barely five and hero-worshiped Severus. She wouldn't leave him behind._

_"I don't know, I heard him a second ago." Lily put her small fists on her hips. Severus squinted into the underbrush. Something small and uncoordinated stumbled out from between two tall maple trees._

_"That was awesome," it huffed kicking some brambles off its leg and stumbling over to Severus and Lily. "Where are we going now!?" it asked, beaming at Severus. Severus glared down at it with his best irritated scowl, but the child was completely undeterred. His smile was that of a naïve trusting puppy, his eyes doubly so, green and sparkling. Severus growled up at the indifferent grey sky._

_"Tyler where were you," Lily asked spinning the kid toward her._

_"There was a thing," he said, "and branches, and then there was a… a thing from the sky and sparklers and-" Tyler panted and Lily squinted over at Severus. He could guess he was in trouble, but it was only a few sparks and some lifted roots. The kid was really annoying after all! He looked sheepish as Tyler continued trying to explain to Lily where he was with his unsophisticated verbal skills. The boy was an idiot, but unlike the other idiots in the world, he was completely and utterly unafraid of Severus Snape._

_"Did you see 'um?" he asked Severus._

_"Huh?"_

_"Tha lizzzerds!" Tyler repeated enthusiastically._

_Severus glared, Lily gave him a look so he grudgingly answered,_

_"I did not see the lizards."_

_The boy's eyes grew wide with excitement that an older boy had spoken directly to him._

_"Come on Lily maybe we should just take him home," Severus said pleading with his eyes. Before he could finish his statement though, something slammed into his stomach and wrapped around his waist. The child was yelling something into his shirt. He couldn't make out what, but he could feel the vibrations of words against his grubby second-hand excuse for clothing. Severus looked like he had been stung as he tried to escape the embrace. Lily was trying to pull her brother off, but that was proving difficult as he latched himself to Severus like an excitable octopus._

_"Can I stay, can I stay!" The boy begged through a mouthful of t-shirt._

_"Come on Tyler, get off," Lily said._

_"Moss! Release me." Severus growled, unclasping the kid's fingers from behind his back and pushing him toward Lily. She held one of his arms up in the air and the boy had the disappointed, left-at-home look on his face again. Lily turned with him to leave, then looked back over her shoulder at Severus._

_"Want to walk him home with me?" she asked. Her smile from earlier had turned into a frown._

_Severus shrugged and followed, not because he wanted to spend more time with Tyler, but because he didn't want to go home yet. His father would have just gotten home and would be yelling about dinner for another hour. If he waited long enough the man might fall asleep and then Severus could sneak in without having to hear a word from him that day. He tagged along behind the pair. Tyler was swinging around still being held tight by Lily. He twisted around backward to smile at Severus then ducked and picked up a rock, a twig, poked a bug on the ground. He asked several times if Severus could make a leaf change colors like he had a few weeks before. Severus grumbled that he couldn't but, inevitably, Tyler would ask for him to perform some small act of magic every time he passed another flower, or patch of leaves._

_Severus had just said "no" to giving an ant wings when Tyler finally asked. "Why'd you call me Moss all tha time?"_

_Severus sneered and said, "because Tyler's a stupid name." Severus understood this was the perfect opportunity for the boy to reply that, "Severus was a stupid name," but the child didn't take the bait. Wasn't smart enough to._

_"Tyler's my name," the boy pointed out, as if Severus were talking about some other Tyler._

_"I know."_

_"Don't say mean things Severus," Lily said, slowing down and frowning at her friend. Severus sighed, not wanting to make Lily upset by insulting her little brother. It was a hard balancing act._

_"Fine." Severus said, "I call you Moss because your sisters both have plant names and I thought it was strange that you didn't." This was the true story. He and Lily had discussed it after he found out Lily had a younger brother as well as a stiff older sister._

_"That's because I was a mistake baby," Tyler said brightly, as if this were some type of compliment and not, as Severus knew he himself was, a disaster and a disappointment. Severus made a face._

_"You can call me Moss though," the boy decided. "I like it."_

_Of course he liked it, thought Severus, the boy likes everything and everyone. He was hopeless._

 

* * *

 

"Severus I need your help, you're all I have left." Severus's legs buckled under him. It had only been a week and a half really. Since Lily had died, only a week and a half. He swallowed a lump in his throat.

Stupid kid! Stupid kid. What was he doing here, and why did he have to bring the baby? Outside the knocking had stopped, but in its place was the disturbing sound of a body falling against the door. Tyler Evans didn't sound like he was on a social call. They hadn't spoken since the Christmas before Harry was born. Severus assumed Lily had finally bucked up and told him what Severus was, either that or one of those Gryfindoor boys had slipped it to him. As much as Severus didn't want to admit it, them telling the kid he was a Death Eater was one of the worst tricks they could have played on him. But he wouldn't admit that, not even to himself. He couldn't. He readjusted against the counter and breathed. Tyler Evans was an idiot, and Severus didn't want him around when he was five, and he surely didn't want him around now.

But he had to do something.

Severus tentatively walked back into the living room. The knocking had ceased, though someone was still on the other side of the door. He could hear the creak of the hinges every few seconds, but Tyler had stopped talking. A miracle if Severus had ever heard one.

Severus picked up his sad dinner and took another bite. Time had not helped the flavor. He swallowed back the cold blob and glared at the door. The doorknob rattled, and something slapped the wood, pathetically. Maybe the boy was giving up? Severus stood there for another three painful bites, waiting for the sound to totally subside. There were a few scrapes and shuffling. The body pushed away from the door, and eventually, Tyler spoke, barely loud enough for Severus to hear.

"Severus. The light's on. I… I saw a shadow move so if you're in there. Sev, if you're in there, Listen. I know what they said about you. I can't believe it. Not totally. I trust you. I trust you because I have to because there is no one, and I mean no one else who I can trust right now. I trust you. I always have, even when Lily forbid me to see you. Things, well. Things got scary and everyone got suspicious, and we saw how that turned out, but listen I need help…"

Severus took in a deep breath of air.

"I have Harry." There was a nervous pause. "I know you know that, listen. I can't. I can't watch him tonight, for-" He took in another deep breath. "You know I'm an idiot. You've always known I'm an idiot, so just." There was another rattle on the doorknob but this one was frustrated and ended with a loud slam against the door that rattled the diploma Severus had hung from the wall. There was quiet crying and Tyler paused in his efforts to get Severus to open the door, to calm the child.

Severus placed the spoon back into what remained of his soup. The kid trusted him after everything, after Sirius's betrayal, and his sister's death. The boy still found it in him to show up to a Death Eater's porch with the child they had tried to kill in his arms.

"Severus." The voice called again.

Severus quietly set the can of soup onto an overcrowded dark wood coffee table. It wouldn't hurt to hear him out at least, maybe let him get the child out of the cold night air. He stood frozen for a moment, surprised he was even considering this, but what choice did he have?

Severus stepped over the box he had been organizing earlier and steadied himself. What was he thinking, what was he doing? He watched numbly as his hand reached out and unlocked the door, then the deadbolt, then he fished his wand out of a pocket and undid a few more security spells. The boy must be waiting with baited breath because there was no sound coming from the other side of the door. Severus steeled himself, put up a mask of indifference and slowly opened the door.

Tyler.

Moss.

Lily's Evan's baby brother stared back.

His dark hair was a ratty mess, his skin pasty and were those new scars on his cheek? The flannel shirt he wore over a dirty band t-shirt had two buttons fastened, and those were lopsided. Severus stared at the boy. He had been sturdy as a child, completely unfazed by life, by people. He was unrelentingly optimistic and shameless. Severus tried to find hints of that boy on the face of the young-man standing in front of him. Was there a trace of it in laugh lines, or in the way he stood? Not really. What he saw now was a frightened 19-year-old shivering in the November air as he curled himself around a sleeping child.

Severus shivered. Couldn't believe what he was about to do. But he would help the man in front of him, because he would have helped the boy who had followed him and Lily around, the boy who had learned magic tricks and smiled every time he saw him, even after Lily had broken off everything with him. He would do it for that.

"Come in," Severus whispered stepping back and holding the door open. Tyler almost ran over the threshold, stumbling, but breathing out in relief. He looked white as a sheet and shook on clearly weak footing.

"Thank you," Tyler exhaled. His eyes batted around, disbelieving, shock on his face as he took in his new surroundings.

"Could I offer you some tea?" Severus offered dryly, shutting the door. Tyler wasn't wearing a coat, he must be freezing.

Tyler shook his head. "I need to go very soon. Here." Tyler untangled Harry from his shoulder and made to hand him over. Severus's stomach jumped into his throat and he backed into the door bumping his head violently on the frame.

"What?" He panicked, flinching away from the child. Tyler pulled Harry back into himself and glanced toward the covered window.

"I need you to watch him for the night. Just the night. I swear, I'll be back by noon tomorrow." Tyler fidgeted with his bottom lip, betraying fear. "He's a good kid. He sleeps through the night." Tyler looked sheepish. "He used to sleep through the nights," he corrected in a mumble. There were deep purple circles under Tyler's eyes, and red around his irises.

"You want me to watch Potter's baby?" Severus said, regaining his footing both physically and verbally.

He glared at the sleeping baby.

Tyler looked confused.

"No." His face scrunched. "I want you to watch Harry. Lily and James's baby…" he flustered then added. "I really need this."

Severus shook his head and quickly darted around Tyler and into the kitchen. As he always used to, the boy followed behind.

"You can't honestly be saying 'no' because of James? Harry's just as much Lily's if not more. Just look at him. Look at his eyes for God's sake, he's got her eyes!" Tyler pleaded. Severus refused to look at the kid. He knew what Lily's eyes looked like and he didn't want reminding. Tyler looked at Severus appearing utterly bewildered and just a bit unhinged. Not angry or hurt, because he wasn't sure Tyler knew how to be those things, he just looked stunned.

Severus wondered if Tyler was even mad at Sirius for his betrayal or if he looked at the situation with the same wide-eyed wonder he was giving him now.

"I know you don't like kids but I have to leave him on your couch if you don't take him," Tyler said slowly pulling Harry back into himself. "I can't take him with me, but I promise I'll be back for him at noon tomorrow." Tyler walked back into the living room. Severus didn't want to follow at first, but the curiosity eventually got to him. This optimistic child was just dropping a baby off, he was just doing it!

Tyler was slowly settling Harry onto a sturdy place in the couch and used a rolled up throw blanket to pin him in.

"Um… at least make sure he doesn't roll off, right?" Tyler asked, his voice cracking a bit as he stood and faced Severus. "I know you haven't said yes yet, but I know you will, you're a good person… so his food is in that bag, and so are his diapers, I figure you have some spell for that, and if he's crying just hold him up to you and rock, he likes that, and anything Quidditch related is his best friend. I left his stuffed quaffle in his bag. He loves to play with that. . ." Tyler trailed off, not knowing what else to say. Severus felt a bit overwhelmed by the wall of instructions, and Tyler was looking like he was leaving his own arm with Severus. He kept reaching for his collarbone as if something was missing.

"Um if I'm not back by noon for some reason, just drop him off. Oh." Tyler reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. That's the address, and you can reach it by floo with that password." He pointed to the words on the page. "It's pretty protected at this point, but that'll get you through. I think that's everything." Tyler nodded and thanked him breathlessly.

Severus blinked up at him. And the similarity to the child Severus once knew suddenly became very obvious. It was in the way he had called on him. His lack of fear in the face of someone his sister had called enemy. His inherent trust in the goodness of people, and his belief, deep down that people would love him as much as he loved them.

Nonetheless, No!

No! He was not going to take this child for the night! What was Tyler thinking, what was going on? Before his mouth could catch up, however, Tyler was frantically looking around the room and rushing out the door again. Cold air filled the room as he flung open the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he called as he hopped off the porch step and dashed to the street, not looking back.

Severus looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand; 614 Grove St. Password: Password.

"The boy is an idiot," Severus said to himself. "And why would he need a babysitter for only one night?" The scrawny child wasn't a huge ladies man, if his youth was anything to go by. Apparently muggle girls weren't into boys who did magic tricks and read inordinate numbers of fantasy novels. And Tyler had never so much blinked an eye at boys. He wasn't fit enough for some secret muggle government organization, so what was going on?

Severus stepped up to the door and watched the boy fumble up the street to the nearest bus stop before looking up at the night sky. It would be a full moon that night, good for brewing powerful potions he realized before a second heavier thought hit him. His stomach churned, his mind flashing back to fifth year. To another too-scrawny boy.

"Werewolf," he whispered remembering the new scars on the boy's pale face. "That boy is definitely an idiot," Severus said, trying desperately to squelch, the terror that was welling in him. He shut the door.

Stepped away. After all, he had another, more pressing matterto deal with just then.

He looked over at the couch where James's child had just blinked its eyes open and lifted its tiny feet high into the air. Did it want something? Severus stepped over and looked down. Brilliant green eyes stared back.

"Shit," was all he said as he realized he had been suckered in.


	2. Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus survives the night with Harry, but when Tyler doesn't show up on time to pick him up, Severus is forced to investigate.

 

"Make sure it was not in vain. Help me protect Lily Evan's son." Dumbledore's words pounded in Severus's ears, but somehow he hadn't expected this to be one of his acts of protection.

Harry didn't want food, or his Quaffle- both fretfully levitated to him from a safe distance. He wouldn't sleep and Severus, grudgingly, came to discover he didn't need his diaper changed. So they were at a standoff, the small version of James (with Lily's eyes) cried from the couch while Severus stood on the other side of the room staring at the baby in the same way he would stare at an angry Hippogriff; A mix of terror and awe.

Who would do this to themselves, he wondered? Create a smaller, noisier, uncommunicative…version of themselves! Severus plugged his ears, but it did little to quiet the sound. The crying rose and fell in waves of angry, choking wails, only to be stifled for a moment before returning louder than before. Severus stared. He had no clue how to get himself out of the situation.

He could take him to someone else, Severus briefly considered. There had to be someone he knew who could help him with a baby. The Malfoys had one about this age. Lucius had once shown him a picture of a platinum blond this eating something that looked like lumpy orange paint. Unfortunately the Malfoys would smother Harry right off, and if they didn't Dumbledore would find out he had contacted a Death Eater family and he would be in more trouble than he was now. Severus wasn't sure how, but he knew Dumbledore would find out and finish him off. He wasn't valuable enough to be forgiven a second time.

Severus took a shuddered breath and tried to tune out the sound of screaming once again.

It didn't work.

He swallowed back the lump in his throat and walked across the room. Harry's face was red and blotchy from exertion. His green eyes were watery, his limbs twitchy. Was that what it was when babies flailed around with little control over their tiny limbs, twitching? Well, he was certainly flailing.

As Severus neared, Harry quieted for a brief second, but he could see another wail under the surface.

"Okay Severus, you can do this." He rolled up the sleeves of his black, long-sleeved shirt. This was the one thing he hadn't tried yet. "Rock him if he gets fussy," Tyler had said. How hard could it be? Severus knew of several potions that needed to be shaken to get the proper reaction, this must be the same general principal.

Severus breathed in, as if about to jump from the astronomy tower and reached out. Harry screamed his loudest squeal yet and Severus jumped backward, running into the coffee table and tumbling ungracefully to the floor.

"Mother- Merlin damn-" Severus started several curse words as he untangled himself from his half-empty boxes and struggled back to his feet.

James Potter was surely tormenting him from the grave with this child as Harry wasn't showing any signs of slowing down.

"Shut up!" he snapped from the other side of the coffee table. Severus had lost it.

The sudden noise seemed to halt Harry in his tracks and he quieted briefly. Severus could feel a pounding in his head where the screaming had been. He felt like he was in a vacuum, in a moment of stopped time.

"What do you want?" He begged the child, briefly wondering if occlumency worked on babies. If it did, he didn't want to try it, especially on one that survived a killing curse.

Severus shut his eyes, enjoyed the quiet before- there it was- a quiet hiccup of a cry, a whine, a wind-up. Severus didn't have a choice, before Harry could fly into another bought of screaming Severus crashed over his coffee table and swept Harry into his arms in one, courageous, movement.

And Harry didn't fight him.

Severus sucked in a breath as Harry curled his chubby arms around his neck. He, not from the strength of the boy's arms, but from the feeling of having another human so near. Harry's warm body was up against his chest, his wet cheek pressed against his unshaven one.

Harry's cries were waning, and Severus let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. The he breathed in, and shock hit him like a brick to the face. Harry smelled… well he smelled like Lily if he had to describe it.

There was something about his clothes, maybe a certain laundry detergent that wasn't Mrs. Scower's Lazy Laundry Day Potions. It was a muggle scent. Lavender or Sunshine. Surely something that Tyler used to clean his own clothes. Severus inhaled greedily, his eyes watering without his control. And then he cursed when he realized the stone pressing on his heart wasn't Harry's small knee. It hurt worst than that. It hurt like an eternity of mistakes and longing.

He pulled Harry away from himself, terrified. He held him out at arm's length facing away so he couldn't see his eyes, only his scruffy head of black hair. Severus walked him around the room, lasted about a minute before his arms grew tired, then pulled the boy in again. Facing away, Harry didn't seem particularly pleased about his current situation, but he had stopped crying and wasn't gearing up for another round. After a few minutes, Severus chanced laying him on the couch again.

He stepped around the coffee table and placed the boy on the center cushion, then stepped back. If it was possible for a one-year-old to glare, Harry was glaring.

Severus wasn't sure what to do. He looked left to his silent floo, then right, a wall of books, then back to Harry. If he was glaring he was at least glaring quietly.

Severus took a chance. He set himself down on the couch next to the boy and pulled over a book he had been reading early that day. After all, Harry's happiness wasn't his problem, the screaming was irritating, but now that the child was quiet, Severus could go back to his regularly scheduled life. He opened his defense theory book to page 134 and continued reading where he had left off the day before.

It didn't take long for his fragile reality to break. Two paragraphs in and Harry screeched something up at him. Severus assumed it was a word, but he couldn't understand which one. He didn't bother to look over to see if something was bothering the child. Instead, he reread the first line of the third paragraph. A screech, and he started back at the top trying his hardest to pull his mind away from his small companion.

"Moo-y," Harry tried again.

Severus relented. "I have no idea what that means."

"Moo-y."

"That doesn't change my mind"

Harry insisted though, "Moo-y," he said loudly.

Severus slammed his book shut and glared over at Harry. The small child's face crinkled into sadness and Severus could sense the coming storm. He flustered angrily and scooted away, opening his book again and praying his distance might change the child's mind about tearing up.

It did not.

Harry's wailing started again, and as his only defense against the noise, Severus read as loudly as he could from the book in front of him, trying to make his own voice drown out Harry's tears.

Harry's crying grew louder and so did Severus's reading until the room was a cacophony of noise.

Severus yelled out the last line of the page, then simply groaned and tossed the book to the side falling forward and resting his arms on his knees.

This shouldn't be so upsetting! He shouldn't care whether a child was crying or not! He could just set up a silencing charm and sleep it out! But the plan felt hollow in his chest. Harry wailed and Severus knew that having to listen to this child crying felt like… he would have to admit it… some type of penance for… for what he had inadvertently done to his parents. Severus looked up from the floor and over at Harry.

"He used to sleep through the night," he mumbled Tyler's words to himself.

Severus slipped off the couch and onto his knees. Harry was crying slightly softer now that Severus had stopped yelling. With a second look, it seemed the boy was more tired than mad. He kept rubbing his small eyes with the back of his chubby hands as tears trickled down his cheeks.

"I let your mum and dad get killed," Severus whispered, not feeling relieved by the admission. Harry clearly didn't understand the confession, "and your idiot uncle dropped you on my couch," he added with irritation.

Harry just stared at him uncomprehending. Severus looked down at the floor, and to his surprise, Harry quieted. It was confusing, but Severus looked up and watched green eyes check him out. They wandered to his hopelessly greasy hair, his dusty black shirt then to his face, his thin lips, his long nose until they met his dark eyes. Harry placed a comforting hand in his own mouth and coughed out the last of his tears.

"I am sorry," Severus admitted quietly.

Harry kicked out, still watching Severus's eyes closely.

"Moo-y," he said around soggy fingers. Severus wanted to sigh in exasperation, but the boy was giving him another hint; His eyes had wandered to the book Severus had tossed aside.

Severus followed the look and squinted in confusion. He reached out and pulled the book over to himself. It was thick, and not exactly child-friendly. At least it wasn't a book he could imagine Lily reading to her son. His own parents would have been fine reading something so gruesome to a toddler.

He held up the gruesome cover for the boy to see. Harry kicked and for the first time, almost smiled. His hand slapped the cover leaving a sticky trail of slobber on the painting of a dementor.

"Moo-y?" Severus asked dryly.

Harry kicked and cooed happily. One of Severus's eyebrows rose and he slowly opened the book, holding it out this time so Harry could see the stylized writing on each page. He read a few words out loud then checked Harry's reaction. The boy's eyes were locked on the object.

"Defense Theory is the ancient and important study of dark magic and how to defend oneself from it. It has been intricately crafted by hundreds, if not thousands of hands throughout history." Severus read another line and Harry watched him, enraptured.

Severus swallowed, feeling slightly successful.

"Okay, so Moo-y is reading, and reading shuts you up?" Severus asked nervously.

Harry slurred something incomprehensible around his fingers.

"Reading it is then," Severus agreed and turned back to the book.

 

* * *

 

It was 1 in the morning by the time they were both asleep, Harry on the couch and Severus on the floor, his face pressed against the binding of the book he had fallen asleep reading.

Severus woke to an aching neck a few hours later, the sky still dark. He was confused briefly about where he was, but returned violently to reality when he saw the sleeping form of Harry on the couch above him.

It was just daylight when the boy woke.

Severus nervously fed him a bowl of cold oatmeal, too afraid that if he heated it, he would burn the child. Harry seemed to be judging him harshly, a sense that only grew stronger as he tried to change the boy's diaper. Growing tired of his stares Severus handed the boy his quaffle and spent the rest of the morning checking the clock waiting for the arrival of the boy's guardian. Eight am turned to nine, and nine to ten before Severus grew worried. He held out through a nap then was forced to feed Harry again, this time with the last piece of bread left in his kitchen. He waited, attempted to distract the toddling boy from eating his books and breaking into his cabinets and boxes by turning on the radio, holding his quaffle just out of his reach and generally doing everything in his power to keep him from screaming.

It was the hardest morning of Severus's life, so by 1:30, as little as Severus wanted to visit Tyler's home, he needed to escape the clutches of the tiny child more. With determination, he wrapped Harry in the blanket from his couch to keep him from wiggling and stepped into the floo.

They stumbled into the living room of a tiny home on a quiet street. Severus coughed out dust and brushed it off both himself and Harry.

"Moss!" he called.

There was no reply.

Severus set Harry on his feet, handed him his quaffle and walked out of the living room and into a kitchen and dining room.

"Moss! Where are you then?" he called again.

Severus's stomach was sinking, thinking that Lily's exhausted brother had dropped the boy on him and fled the country. Not that it mattered; Tyler's instructions were to leave Harry in the living room if he wasn't back by noon.

Severus paused and considered leaving. Would there be consequences? Was this something he had secretly signed up for when Dumbledore had asked him to protect Lily's son? A thousand thoughts and unnamed worries flicked through his mind before he grudgingly decided he couldn't just leave the boy. He couldn't just leave Lily's son alone in an apparently empty home. He checked the upstairs bedrooms and the kitchen and the bathrooms. Nothing. No sign of Lily Evan's disaster of a little brother.

He was about to head back to the living room where Harry was surely getting himself into trouble when he heard coughing. He froze and strained his ears. Another cough, this one clearly emanating from somewhere below him. Severus put new vigor into his search. It was frustrating.

The house was too small for secrets and there were certainly better things he could be doing with his time than chasing a hint of a noise. But still, duty and a scratch of curiosity drew him to tap his wand against walls and cabinets looking for a hidden space.

After ten minutes, and with a great deal of luck, a crack appeared along the edge of a wall that should have lead to an under-stair closet, if anything. Severus tapped his wand again muttering a second revealing spell and watched as the tan wall shimmered and melted away to reveal a sturdy wooden door. He pulled at a few manual locks then opened the door onto a dark stairwell. There was another wet cough, this one louder, and definitely coming from the bottom of the staircase. A voice mumbled something incoherent. It sounded like Tyler, but Severus couldn't be sure.

He stepped down onto a bouncing wooden step, lit his wand and looked down. At the bottom of a short staircase was another door, this one heavy iron. Severus's stomach sank. His guess from the night before was more than a passing fear. He tugged the edge of his sleeve nervously then with determination reminded himself that the full moon had set hours ago, that there was nothing to fear.

 _Wolves don't cough_ he reminded himself.

Then it occured to him that if it wasn't a wolf behind the door it would just be Tyler. His brain involuntarily pulled up images of Lupin; tired, cold and nursing a limp or a sling once a month. If Tyler looked weak and pale when he had dropped Harry off how would he look now after being trapped with himself inside a closed cellar for a night?

Severus took a step back, sinking back into the safe light of the kitchen.

"Werewolf" he repeated, low and warily. He had walked into a dark tunnel leading to a werewolf once before. That day hadn't ended as poorly as it could have, but it hadn't ended the way he had intended.

How would this walk end?

Behind him, Harry toddled into the room. In his hand was the remnants of a ripped up newspaper. The boy chirped something indistinct. Babbled and chuckled as he dropped the sports section onto the floor. Quidditch players scattered out of their picture for safer photos. Severus didn't stop to wonder how the muggle was still receiving the Daily Profit, or why, because, at that moment, a second voice joined in the nonsensical babbling.

"Harry!?"

It was definitely Tyler. The voice from the basement kept going, but none of the words were clear.

Severus felt trapped.

Harry needed someone to watch over him. Tyler needed someone to save him.

He could call St. Mungoes, or the ministry or even Dumbledore but then Tyler would surely be arrested.

Severus's mind wandered to Petunia Evans…

Severus looked back and forth between Harry and the locked door before his feet made up his mind for him. He gritted his teeth and took a step forward. After all, nothing in the basement could possibly be worse than what he had seen during his time as a Death Eater. In fact, a few cuts and bruises would be a tame exercise in torture for some of the Dark Lord's more enthusiastic followers.

His mind made up, he moved swiftly down the spongy wooden stairs and stopped at the iron door. All the bolts were manual, built for a muggle, but not a wolf, to maneuver.

Severus unlocked them with a quick alohomora, slid his hand up the side until he found a lever and pulled. The door released easily and he pushed inward.

The room beyond wasn't much bigger than an Azkaban cell. The floors were thick concrete floors and the walls, stone block. There was a thin stream of green-tinted light coming in through an algae-coated window set high in the wall. Severus followed the beam down, down to the floor where Tyler was struggling to sit up.

Severus swallowed a lump in his throat. Drowned out Lily's voice in his head. The one that was panicking about her baby brother. Lily's baby brother.

Severus growled and shoved everything behind the wall he had built for this type of situation. He didn't care!

"Where's Harry." Tyler's eyes roamed wildly around the dark room. "It's flipping cold down here. Harry'll need a coat…So really cold." His words tapered off with a shiver, then came back stronger, "I hav. I hav to get to Harry."

Tyler wasn't speaking to him. For all Severus knew Tyler could have been babbling to himself for hours. The young man wasn't lucid, wasn't in control of his thoughts or his mouth. The only stimulus Tyler was reacting too was the occasional sounds of Harry's chattering from the kitchen. Tyler's fight to sit up, to move to call for the boy increased with every babble he heard.

Severus tried to judge the situation impartially. He tried to detach, calculate, like he would with any captive the Death Eaters might keep in a basement. This wasn't the boy he had grown up with, it was just a body. Just a sick man.

Servus scanned him. He was pale, almost green in the strange light. There was an easy solution for that. Severus produced a ball of light in his hand and set it afloat into the center of the room. The spell would hold for a short amount of time. Long enough to show Tyler's true wounds.

The white light did the boy no favors though. He was bloody. Severus's brain rushed to store his feelings on the far side of the wall.

 _He's bloody_. He noted, creating a list. _He's bruised_ , several black and blue marks were appearing around his bare ribs and arms. _He's pale under the blood and thinner than a rail._ He may be dehydrated and he certainly seemed feverish.

Severus counted up the injuries as he crossed the room.

To Severus's surprise Tyler watched his movement. His eyelids flickered open slightly more as he tried to find out what was going on. Severus crouched down next to the bloody, slumped figure, not worried that his sullied robes would now be covered in an extra layer of grime. That would wash out.

Tyler groaned, as he exhaled, then tried to push himself upwards, he made it halfway before Severus had to reach out and steer him the rest of the way into a sitting position. The boy reached for Severus's sturdy arm as he fell heavily against the wall.

He almost smiled before he looked up at Severus, and their eyes met.

Green.

Severus panicked and looked down to the bruises covering the boy's chest. _Push it down._ He demanded of himself.

"Harry's upstairs. He's okay. You have him. I was so worried. I've-" Tyler rambled.

After mentioning Harry several times, Tyler's continued chain of mumbled words sped up ever so slightly. He was anxious about Harry and was desperately trying to tell Severus.

While Severus eyed his bruises, and planned the fastest, simplest course of treatment. Tyler jerked a few times and tried to sit up straighter with no real control. Severus pulled his hand away. Tyler continued to mumble. After a while, Severus could only make out Harry's name.

After a moment Tyler began fighting to get to his feet. His legs, only covered in boxers were pasty and shaking under his meager weight. He couldn't get his legs under him, let alone rise to a standing position, so Severus didn't fight him. He let gravity do the work for him. Severus, guided him back into a sitting position, and looked up enough to stare at his mouth, chapped and still moving.

Severus reached out a hand and covered it. He couldn't think with all the noise. He couldn't come up with a plan for how to save this moron while he was chattering on. Tyler's skin was hot to Severus's touch. Too hot. He pulled back, and to no surprise of Severus's Tyler's lips were still moving, undeterred.

Severus wanted to curse, he really did. He was digging himself deeper into this hole. He was now, not only watching Harry, but also watching the boy who had dropped him off.

His eyes shrank to slits and he could feel anger bubbling in him. Why did Tyler call on him? What was he thinking? What was wrong with him? How the hell did he get into this situation and why did Dumbledore hand Harry to him? He blustered and fumed until he smacked his hand back over Tyler's mouth.

"Shut up."

Tyler's mouth slowly stopped moving. Severus centered himself and asked the simplest, most polite question he could manage,

"Do you think you are going to live through this?" Severus didn't know anything about muggle strength. They seemed so fragile compared to wizards it was hard to say what would kill them. But if Tyler thought he could live, Severus could leave.

Tyler fought with his eyes until they met Severus's and for the first time since he'd come to the basement Tyler was actually looking at him. Not with fever or confusion, but looking at him, recognizing him.

It took everything in Severus to look back. A stab of pain was boring through his heart, but he kept his eyes steady.

That's when he saw the spark. The small light in Tyler's eye and he remembered, Tyler knew how to interact with him. He wasn't a stranger or a prisoner in a basement. Tyler knew all of his buttons, all of his pet peeves, and inside jokes. Just as Lily had. A warm smile tried to move onto Tyler's face as Severus uncovered his mouth. The boy slurred,

"Pick a card, any card." It was a hark back to the boy's favorite trick, a game of calculated chance, where Tyler always won.

He would live.

Still, Severus stared, bewildered that the boy could come up with that answer in his state. Tyler blinked a few times then looked down,

"Also I may be bleeding." he tacked on. He poked at a bleeding scrape on his leg as if it were an alien creature.

Severus almost laughed, the boy's reaction was too absurd, too opposite of what Severus was feeling, but he couldn't laugh at a time like this, not when he was so furious!

"You think there's still some Chudley Cannon band-aids in the house?" he asked. "That's a lot of blood."

Severus fought the smile that threatened to prick up the edge of his lips. He couldn't press away the image of the boy who used to stumble out of the woods after being tripped by a dozen trees, and chased by sparks, smiling and babbling about "lizerds!"

Tyler saw the almost smile, and Severus could have kicked himself for letting it show. Tyler coughed and tried to smile back through his obvious pain, but his body fought back, breaking him in half with hacks. Severus held out a hand, holding him up until he caught his breath.

When he could speak again, he asked,

"You took care of Harry?" Severus readjusted his fingers on Tyler's sweaty shoulder. All he could manage was a disbelieving scoff before Tyler's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he slumped to the side.

The last thing Tyler felt before he blacked out was a hand catching him before he hit the cold concrete.


	3. Miss Her Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler wakes up, and Severus does not appreciate being used.

"I don't like it." Alastor Moody didn't like much of anything; Dumbledore knew that, so he smiled from behind his desk, but didn't reply as the auror paced back-and-forth across his office.

"The boy's nineteen, Albus."

"And capable."

"And absolutely bloody ridiculous."

"Have you met him?" Dumbledore raised an eyebrow.

Moody simply scowled at him. Dumbledore had heard the stories, Moody walking into the Potter's first home in London after an Order meeting; Meeting a bubbly teenager with a handful of cards and no sense of self-preservation.

Dumbledore remembered Lily and James in their 7th year, asking every Order member and writing letter after letter, looking for a floo-connected home in London, where they could move after graduating. They needed a place where they could take in Tyler, and Lupin until they were all on their feet. They had all moved out about two years later leaving the home to the boy.

"I know enough from what the- " Moody paused on the word. After two weeks it was still painful to say it, still painful to think of them not as a group, not as a single word instead of the shattered remains of a family. "-What the marauder's used to tell me about him." He let the sentence hang in the air, as Dumbledore contemplated the ceiling, then his folded hands.

"I believe I made the correct decision in his placement, for the time being," Dumbledore said.

"What about Lily's sister?" Moody grumbled.

"She would not have been as good of a choice." Dumbledore protested, "From my understanding, she has certain negative opinions of the magical world."

"All the better! You've met Lily's brother. He is-"

"He is a little too enthusiastic, but caring, and devoted. He would have made quite the Hufflepuff if he had taken after his second sister. Hogwarts lost a great gift in him."

Moody narrowed his eyes, harrumphed and crossed the room to the window. He pried it open and screamed out the window at a pair of students jinxing a third. They looked about themselves confused, then scattered when they saw the scarlet Auror robes hanging around the grizzled man in the window.

"Bloody kids." Moody hobbled back to the center of the room and added to Dumbledore, "He'll need protection, one way or another. Lupin knows about the placement. If he did have something to do with-"

"I truly doubt Lupin's disappearance has anything to do with allegiances," Dumbledore cut in calmly.

"But if it does, and he comes back to finish the job-"

"I refuse to let us turn on one another." Dumbledore shot him a steely stare, and this time Moody relented.

"Then Severus?" Moody asked quietly, knowing that the once-Death Eater knew about Tyler Evans and would suspect the placement.

A shadow passed behind his blue eyes before Dumbledore replied, "He will be here at Hogwarts soon enough, and I promise he won't harm the boy."

"You promise a great deal Albus," Moody said.

Dumbledore nodded without looking up at the Auror. He lost himself in a thought, old and uncomfortable, but it soon passed, and he returned his attention to Moody.

"It will all be well," he said.

"So The-Boy-Who-Lived stays in the protective arms of his dim uncle?" Moody accepted slowly.

"For now." Dumbledore nodded. "For now."

 

* * *

 

_"We really appreciate you helping us out with this." Mr. Evans smiled into the rearview mirror. Severus fiddled with his sleeves in the backseat of the car, next to a small stack of books and a brand new set of Gobstones they had picked out for Lily's fourteenth birthday that January. "You know how hard it is for us to pick out gifts Lily can use at Hogwarts." Lily's father chuckled lightly. The previous year they had bought her a radio. It didn't work within the Hogwarts grounds and was a disappointment to both Lily and her parents._

_"My pleasure, sir," Severus replied._

_The older man shook his head at the title, and Severus flinched. He always forgot the Evans' informality, their kindness. Mr. Evan's frowned at him in the car's mirror. He was a slightly heavyset man with a greying beard and a warm smile his son had more than inherited. If Severus hadn't already known this, he would have been witness to it seconds later. Tyler had wiggled himself around in the seat with the smile of a clabbert (If a clabbert wasn't so hell-bent on finger biting.) The boy was shuffling a set of cards around the chair and interrogating him about wizard's chess, and exploding snap occasionally breaking to ask him to "pick a card, any card." Severus obliged, but only because Mr. Evans was there, watching him, judging the boy who spent so much time with his daughter. The older man tugged Tyler's shirt to get him to turn around but it was to no avail, and Severus was left entertaining him._

_"Three of diamonds," Severus told the younger boy. Tyler immediately pressed his head into his headrest in utter exasperation and then explained, again, that Severus wasn't supposed to tell him the card. Tyler reached through the headrest to take the card back from him acting put-upon._

_"Try again. Pick a card, any card."_

_Severus picked out a card, and was immediately tempted to tell Tyler that he had just drawn a queen of spades because it would mean not having to act impressed when the boy flicked it out again in a few moments, but he was worried about Mr. Evans' green eyes in the mirror. He returned the card and forced himself to look out the window. Outside snow fluttered by, a surprise after the rain the night before, but the temperature had been plummeting all day._

_"Have you gotten to see much of your parents this holiday break?" Mr. Evan's asked. "I have to say I was surprised when you decided to come back here. Don't you usually stay at school?"_

_"I've been visiting friends' families mostly," Severus lied. He had come back to spend time with Lily and hide in his room until Christmas was over. He didn't say that quite a few Slytherins were staying for break this year and he didn't want to be left at Hogwarts alone with them. He could handle his parents for a few weeks if it meant getting to see Lily._

_"Cut the deck now!" Tyler demanded happily. Severus shook himself out of his thoughts and took the top half of the deck then handed the stack back to the boy. Severus pretended not to notice as Tyler palmed a card into a place in the deck he would recognize._

_"Tyler I need you to turn around and sit down," Mr. Evans reminded with another tug at the boy's shirt._

_"No, Da'. I'm working on this trick."_

_"Not in the car," Mr. Evans insisted, to Severus's relief. "Turn around."_

_Mr. Evans took his hand off the wheel for just a moment to pry Tyler's hands off the back of the chair. Severus reached out and began to untangle Tyler's arms from the seat, but as he worked something flicked in the corner of his vision, an oncoming car skidded._

_Black ice and snow were making a mess of the evening._

_Severus's eyes grew to the size of plates. Tyler's followed his line of sight, turned in time to see the bright blue car, hear the screeching. He went to cover his head, but his hand was trapped, stuck in Severus's warm grip and then world jerked forward for only a second and then he was watching from the roadside as the family's four-door boxy red allegro spun out, flipped over and crashed into the median, too still to be anything but a pile of crushed glass and bent metal._

_What was left of Lily's gifts were scattered along the roadside like shrapnel, but all Tyler knew was that someone was holding him back from running to his father. Someone had their hands around his shoulders keeping him in place as pain wracked him. So, so, much pain._

 

* * *

 

His body screamed. He couldn't breathe without needles jabbing into his chest, couldn't move without axes burying themselves in his shoulders and back, and legs. There was so much screaming.

"Merlin!" Someone was cussing in front of him and then wrapping a blanket so tightly around him that he couldn't move. They had done that at the crash too, the day his dad had died, he wouldn't stop fighting to reach him until they wrapped him so tightly he couldn't even move a finger. Now, once again his arms were pressed to his sides, completely immobile. He slowly realized he had been fighting someone off. A cool hand reached up and covered his mouth and half of the screaming in the room quieted.

He breathed heavily through the other's fingers as the world swirled back into view. First the far wall, off-white around a large fireplace. Pain was shooting down his legs as if someone were pulling apart his bones. He breathed in a shallow breath, shivered and blinked as the decorations on the mantle appeared; pictures of his family, Harry and Dudley's art projects.

Pain in his sides, cuts stung, and bruises throbbed. This was the home Lily and James had left him when they moved to Godric's Hollow. Spikes were drilling into his head.

The floor. Harry! The pain was pushed aside when he saw the boy standing against the coffee table and crying. He began to fight anew, bones grinding and skin screaming under the blanket. He tried to bolt from the couch, but pain, a blanket, and two pale hands stopped him. The rest of the world came crashing back. He was home, and right in front of him was the thin face of Severus Snape.

Whoa.

Tyler fell backward into the couch, coughing, and then with half a breath, talking; rasping, trying to explain himself, trying to tell Severus everything, spitting it out in half sentences, words, phrases, until he lost himself. He sputtered a name and a place and then began fighting to get to Harry again. He had to comfort Harry. Why was Severus fighting him? Why was Harry crying? He wrestled until Severus pressed a small vial of smoking white liquid into his mouth and tilted it back.

It tasted like the first time he had bitten into baker's chocolate. Horrible and unwelcome but with an aftertaste of something familiar, chocolate. Painlessness. A gift from God.

Warmth swirled in his stomach, slowly worked out to his fingers and toes like he was thawing after a long winter walk. He waited and finally, the potion seeped into the worst areas, his ribs, neck and finally his headache that had been pounding behind everything else. It all released.

He melted into the couch as the world started floating…black spots popped in his vision blood pressure plummeted. He had almost blacked out a second time when Severus clapped loudly in his face and forced his attention.

He needed to pay attention! Tyler his eyes open. This was a bad moon, worst he'd had in years, but he could focus, he could do that. Everything had hurt when he had woken that morning, and if it wasn't hurting, it was bleeding. He had tried to staunch it, but he just kept blacking out. He felt awful. He had made a promise to Severus to be back by noon, and now here the other man was, in front of him, looking grumpy, but having saved his life.

"Thank you?" Tyler tried to say through a foggy haze.

Severus did not look interested in his thanks.

"I'm leaving. I've done what I can for most of your injuries. Do you think you can take care of yourself and Harry?"

Tyler felt the tight bandages around his ribs, the burn of silver dittany crusting over his cuts. He knew they never worked as well as they did for Remus, nothing ever did. With enough potions and salves, the other werewolf could usually be back in action within a day, while Tyler would still be in too much pain to leave the couch two days after the full moon. He had felt miserable and pathetic by this realization until James had explained that many potions didn't work quite as well on muggles. Others work too well, it was based on design, and no one was bothering to design werewolf-healing potions for muggles.

James did what he could, calling on his parents and skimming old family potions books for answers. The simple truth was that not much could overcome the fact that muggles were simply not as sturdy as an honest-grown witch or wizard. Nonetheless, potions could do better than even the best drugs on the market, and Severus had the education to tell them apart. Tyler felt immensely thankful for Severus's care, and now he honestly didn't want him to leave.

And anyway, Severus couldn't leave him like this could he? He squinted at his old friend and felt a warm, safe glow followed by weariness. It was overwhelming. Everything would be okay if Severus would just stay a few more hours.

"Why?" he wondered aloud, surprising even himself; Severus didn't need to explain why he wanted to leave, he'd already done more than he had been asked to do, but Tyler wasn't sure he could take care of himself, let alone Harry.

He pulled his eyes open enough to see Severus's scowl. Severus liked to imagine himself heartless, but Tyler knew he just needed a reminder that he wasn't. He pressed a smile onto his lips, feeling a sealed over cut on his face crack at the motion.

"You look grumpy," he murmured.

"Why what, Moss?" Severus snapped since scowling wasn't working to clarify what he wanted answered.

Tyler squinted in confusion and then realized Severus was upset, really actually upset. Tyler needed to cover up his previous question, he needed to show Severus that he didn't need him to stay. He was thankful but capable. He racked his brain and finally asked,

"Is Harry okay?" The toddler had quieted when Tyler had started talking, but he couldn't quite tell if he was okay.

Severus sneered and turned around to Harry. He walked across the room then picked the boy off the floor like a dirty pet and set him on the couch. Harry's face was still tear strained as pressed his face into the blanket that was still wrapped, vice-like, around his uncle.

"Are you fine now?" Severus asked, motioning to the boy.

Tyler looked down at Harry, hoping to god the toddler was tired enough to fall asleep and nodded as gently as he could manage. He squinted up at Severus and tried to hold up his smile.

"We're good," he reassured hoarsely.

Severus looked skeptical but didn't say anything as he turned to leave the room.

Tyler shut his eyes, but then remembered hurriedly.

"Hey, Sev?" He would have to ask now. Showing up on the man's porch again a month from now wasn't an option. To his surprise Severus stopped right before leaving the room. "So do you wanna watch Harry next-" He didn't get the rest of the sentence out. Severus bared down on him, hands gripping the arm-rest of the couch.

"I don't know who you think I am to you Tyler Evans, but I promise I am not your friend, I am not your helper. I have a life, and important things to do. I don't have time to be babysitting your sister's bad decision. Surely your vial oldest sister could watch him." They held each other's stares for several seconds. Tyler didn't flinch away.

"She's not magic," He said slowly as if this were obvious. Severus's lip curled and Tyler guessed the wizard was silently calling him thick, though he couldn't guess why. He decided tocontinued talking because clearly, Severus wasn't understanding, "Harry's wanted by some Dark Lor-."

"Don't call him that."

"What? Harry? That's his-"

"No not-" Severus's bottom lip disappeared into his mouth. He looked down at his hands. They were white from the strain of gripping the armrest, and Tyler began to realize the gravity of the situation.

Severus hissed out a breath before saying, "The Dark Lord is gone and whatever it was that existed between Lily and I is similarly, over. Finished. It has been years and the fact that you haven't figured that out just proves how utterly pitiful your mindis. I don't need you dragging me back into your unfortunate excuse for a life."

Severus's bitterness was unprecedented today, Tyler noted. At least a 5 on he and Lily's patented, "Bitter Severus measurement scale." Harry must have kept him up all night.

"Why do you get to call him the Dark Lord and I don't?" Tyler said, petulantly, hoping that a petty argument would distract Severus from whatever pity party he was throwing himself.

It didn't work.

"How is it possible that you are this pathetic?" Severus's voice was in the lowest hiss Tyler had ever heard. "You got yourself turned into a werewolf. You got custody of a baby you can't hope to take care of, and now you've turned to me for help? What went wrong in your life that this is where you are now?"

Tyler blinked at Severus, not sure where to start. If he were honest Severus and Lily were likely the root of most of his peculiarities, but this didn't seem like the moment to mention it. He swallowed prepared to answer, but it didn't matter because Severus cut in, "Do not bring Harry back to my house." He pushed himself away from the couch and added, "Grow up and survive on your own just like everyone else!"

Tyler thought the words sounded more pleading than angry, but he couldn't be certain, Severus was talented at covering his true feelings. In contrast, Tyler could feel his own face flipping through all the emotions he carried; Surprise, frustration, confusion, fear and suddenly it all caved in like a crumbling house. Tyler could see Godric's hollow again could feel his heart being squeezed and sucked away. He felt himself fall apart, just like he had been falling apart every day since Halloween night. His last failsafe, the last person he thought he could rely on, was leaving.

He pulled himself forward on the couch, fighting angry muscles and sore bones.

"You want to know why I brought him to you?" He asked, trying desperately to keep calm. "I trust you and I miss you. …You didn't come to her funeral, and I missed you."

Tyler tried to stare Severus down but he wouldn't look at him. He was being evasive, stepping backward toward the garden door.

"I needed someone to stick this out with me and you weren't there!"

If he could, he would have risen and grabbed the man by the shoulders to keep him in the room. He didn't want someone else slipping away from him. It was panic that brought him to yell,

"I brought Harry to you because you're the only person in the world who I thought would miss her as much as I do!"

And then Severus flinched. He actually, visibly, flinched, and Tyler's stomach dropped into his feet.

He still cared about her! Severus did miss her as much as he did. Tyler didn't have the chance to apologize or tell Severus that he understood why he hadn't been at the funeral, because Severus had turned, burst out the backdoor and into the small closed off garden. Tyler tried to detangle himself from the blanket but heard the pop from the backyard that told him Severus had disapparated before he had even an arm free.

A sob escaped his lips, and Tyler fell back into the couch feeling shaken and hot. He was left alone, in deadened silence, the world feeling a bit like a shaken jigsaw puzzle, pieces strewn everywhere. He barely realized when Harry said something about "Pongs" and tried to hand him a toy. It would be okay right? If mothers could lift cars off their children, surely he could drag himself off the couch if Harry needed something, even in his current state of being mostly not dead. His ribs screamed as he fought off miserable tears. He was the one who signed up for this, he reminded himself. Though saying 'no' had never been much of an option. He had to take care of Harry because if he lost the boy too, the hollowness in him would devour everything that mattered. He would be a black hole, just like Severus imagined himself.

Meeting his first nephew, Dudley had been the most stunning day of his life. Not long after, Harry was born, and from day one looking at him was like looking directly at the sun. He wanted to stare, but anything that brilliant must be harmful to his health.

Harry made Tyler feel like he would explode with love, and thinking about not being his guardian, now that Lily was… now that Lily was dead…was like being stabbed a thousand times, then buried under a mountain of earth. No full moon could compare to what losing Harry would feel like. So he propped himself up on the couch and prayed for the strength to get through the next couple of days.


	4. Not a Yes

Severus wanted to forget, to get his life back on track. He wanted the alone life, without Death Eaters, without Lily, without Tyler, and especially without Harry.

He wanted a simple, lonely, existence, but images of Harry kept resurfacing. They fought for his attention. Harry's eyes were just like Lily's, his clothes smelled like her. The one time the child had laughed in his presence it had stopped his heart. He laughed like her. It was haunting him. From the moment he had dropped Harry back at Tyler's side the boy had been trapped in his mind's eye.

And when it wasn't the boy, it was the house. He knew Lily and James had lived there after leaving Hogwarts and before moving to the house that had burned down. Pieces of them were still left around the edges. The pictures there were of the Evans as children, happy and together. Others were of the wedding, and some of the marauders. He yearned to look more closely at the corners and crevices of the space, to find Lily in all the details, in the cook books left on the shelves, the decorations on the walls, the paint, the perfectly brewed potions in the cabinets.

Then, of course, Tyler would come to mind. If it was nothing else it was that the boy had Lily's absolute and complete love. Lily was good, purely and absolutely good, and Severus had to admit, Lily had made sure that even when she stumbled, Tyler would never have to. So when the boy yelled today it had started eating him up inside immediately.

Severus had stormed out. Stormed out and disapparated the second he realized that Tyler had seen his secret. That Tyler was now one of the few people on the planet who knew how much he still cared for Lily; that he loved her. He didn't want that. He didn't want anyone else in on that information, it was dangerous and painful to know someone saw a crack in his carefully constructed exterior- and more dangerous that it was known by a boy who talked more than he didn't. So Severus had stormed out before more could be said, more could be realized.

He reappeared in the woods, at the edge of Cokeworth. The rare November sun sent harsh shadows through the leafless trees. Twigs cracked under his feet as he walked.

He knew why he had come to this spot. This was where he had spent so much time with Lily. When they were younger it was a jungle of adventures. The trees were towers and beanstalks to giants, the paths lead to dragon's lairs and every trickle of water an ocean.

As they grew the ocean may have shrunk back to a stream and dragons slept safely, but stories were still shared. He and Lily would walk and talk. They would laugh. The forest was eerie and awful without her, just like everything else in his life.

Almost everything.

Severus found a branch of the old stream and stepped into its icy waters. His shoes soaked through, and the water stung his skin. It was a horrible idea, his feet were ice cold and wet. He stepped out, cursing himself, but he had to admit that for a second, the cold had helped him forget everything. The stinging water helped him choke down the realization that Tyler, that Harry, had almost made him feel human again.

He left the stream and any path behind. No one saw him or spoke to him as he swept through the underbrush asking himself questions, asking the universe questions.

Listening even when nothing answered.

There was only silence.

But he kept walking, because what else was there to do but move and try not to remember the girl and the promises he made to her.

 

* * *

 

_Thick summer heat had settled over Hogwarts, and still vacation hadn't come. Severus would do anything to leave the school, though neither the trip home, nor the summer weeks would bring him much joy. With Lily so furious at him he couldn't imagine anything worth living for, but there was a chance, just a chance that he would see her this summer, and it all depended on this next conversation._

_He stood just inside the door that led out to the courtyard. Lily was seated lazily atop the outer wall where they used to spend some of their free time, but like everything else she had gotten the wall in their falling out._

_Severus pulled up the sleeves of his robes. Yes, it was miserably hot outside but he needed to speak to her, and, of course, he wanted to. This was the best place to corner her. They hadn't spoken since the night she had yelled at him after he had said the word. The damned word. He fingered the edge of the parchment in his pocket and bit his lower lip, working up courage._

_He finally gathered himself, nudged the door the rest of the way open and rushed across the open space to where Lily sat. She didn't look up from the book in her hands for quite a few seconds. When she finally turned her attention up to him her face was closed off and bitter._

_"Can I help you?" she clipped._

_Severus felt his hands slipping with sweat. Lily had clearly placed a cooling charm around herself, temperature charms were something she had become particularly good at. It was how she found quiet places to sit and read. Go somewhere cold, set up a warming charm, go somewhere unbearably hot, set up a cooling spell, then sit and read in quiet. He knew her defense mechanisms, her hiding-out skills. They were the same whether she was hiding from noisy siblings or noisy Gryffindors, or now, him._

_He didn't answer right away, but pulled the letter from his pocket. It was two pages on thin lined muggle paper. Both sides of both sheets were filled, edge-to-edge, with small messy words. He let Lily gingerly take it out of his hands and skim the first few lines. She got the gist quickly and folded it back up without looking up at him. She was trying to compose herself. She didn't speak, and didn't speak, and finally, Severus asked, "You didn't tell him?"_

_Lily crossed her legs; One slim leg over the other and stared evasively at her knees. She shook her head, barely perceptibly._

_"I couldn't tell him," she admitted._

_"So now what?" Severus asked seriously. She couldn't honestly expect them to head back to Cokeworth and pretend like she hadn't broken it off. That there wasn't an irreparable rift between them, getting wider every day. "He wrote that to me. He'll come over to my house by himself, he expects us to hang out this summer." Severus pointed to a very specific line in the boy's letter where he asked if he wanted to see his new metal ring tricks, if he wanted to go see a movie with him, "What do you expect me to do?"_

_"Go to the movies," Lily replied bitterly._

_Severus's eyebrows crawled up his forehead before he could ask, "And what do I tell him about us?"_

_"Whatever you want." She looked everywhere but at Severus or the letter. She fidgeted then stood up and began putting books back into her bag._

_"Lily, he's a muggle kid." Severus knew it was dumb to believe he could talk Lily into spending time with him if Tyler was involved, but he had had that spark of hope and now it was gone. Now Lily just expected him to spend time with her brother because the boy had asked, and the boy would keep asking until the world ended in an explosion of fiendfyre. Severus knew, from experience, that Tyler would show up at his house, he would meet him on the street, he would write him letters. Severus bit his tongue before accidentally calling the boy annoying or bothersome. Lily always made faces when he called him that, so instead he said weakly, "I can't tell him…"_

_"What Severus? You can't tell him what?" Lily looked at him with a piercing, confrontational glint in her green eyes, "That you called me a mudblood? That your best friends use dark magic, that you are joining a group of people who want me and him dead?"_

_Severus took a step back, it was impossible not to in the face of her wrath, under her seething glare. Stepping away he realized he hadn't considered how Tyler would take the news, and he found he couldn't answer her. He had been more worried about losing his last connection to Lily than he was about the boy. It was bad enough that Lily hated him, but he wouldn't know what to do if Tyler's trusting eyes betrayed fear and hatred as well._

_So what would he tell Tyler, and what would he do without Lily that summer vacation?_

_"I promised to protect you from them," Severus reminded slowly, dragging a memory out of their past as a last-ditch attempt to keep her._

_"-And my family," Lily added bitterly. "I remember; The summer after first year, when all those killings were taking place... You promised to protect me… and my family."_

_Severus remembered that Lily Evans' smile had been the brightest between their first and second years. The weather was always perfect and the days always stretched long, but not long enough to get in everything they wanted to do. The forest was smaller, sure, and the playground seemed juvenile, but that didn't matter, they had Hogwarts to talk about and homework to do together, and devilish plans to make. But that was also the summer when the first real attacks began, and Severus had promised to protect her, to protect her family._

_"I would never hurt you," He told Lily seriously. "…Or Tyler," he added when her face didn't change from a disappointed glare. How could she not understand that she could be protected, that he could do it, no matter what side he was on?_

_"But not everyone else like us?" Lily reminded for the hundredth time._

_"I promise you," Severus repeated fiercely._

_"I don't care," Lily said, ignoring him. She breathed in and finally got back around to the point of their discussion. "Tyler deserves the truth, but he also should get to believe in the goodness of the world a little longer, because he can." She pinched her eyes shut and admitted. "I need him to believe in the goodness of the world, because I can't anymore. So I'm not going to tell him about you."_

_She had said exactly what Severus couldn't put into words. Destroying Tyler's misguided adoration of him would kill the last bit of warmth he could still feel in the cold stone of his heart, and not only because the boy was his last connection to Lily._

_Lily gave him the disappointed, deadened look he had come to know and bumped his shoulder as she hurried away. Severus was left stunned under the burning sun, his fingers gripping the edges of Tyler's long driveling letter, knowing he couldn't break the boy's faith any more than Lily could. Knowing he would have to prove to Lily that he could protect her. That he could protect her family._

_How far did that promise extend? Did it continue after he had already failed? Did it extend past her death?_

 

* * *

 

The day flickered in and out.

In, and out.

Tyler detangled himself from the blanket, put on a dirty t-shirt he found draped over a chair. He fed Harry, changed his diaper, sat on the floor as the boy climbed all over him, he winced, and bit his tongue and tried to play when Harry offered him small stuffed animals from his pile of toys. He dozed. He gave Harry snacks and another meal though he couldn't bring himself to eat as nausea and a headache were returning with a vengence. The cabinets of potions leftover from Lily and James were a mystery of unlabeled bottles. He popped several Tylenol and slumped onto the kitchen floor.

When he awoke again he had made it to the couch, though he couldn't remember how. Light had faded outside the window and the living room was grey in the darkness.

He couldn't move from shaking. The pain potion had fully worn off, and any fever reducer Severus had sloshed down his throat while he was unconscious had tapered off in his system. He was burning hot, sweat beaded on his forehead and had soaked his thin t-shirt. Where was Harry? His stomach flipped and fear almost made him sick. Where was Harry? He reached out for the coffee table, needing something to help drag himself out from under the covers that were cooking him alive.

The blankets clung to his clothing as he pulled himself up, making it hard to escape. He freed one leg, gingerly pressed his knee into the carpeted floor as the world began spinning furiously around him. He pressed a hand into the ground, half free from the couch and still no sign of his nephew. He tried to call out, but the boy's names escaped his lips in a hoarse whisper.

He pushed a little farther then tried to control his fall to the ground as he escaped the pull of the couch. He landed on his back on the floor, his heart was pounding so hard he could feel it from his empty stomach through his teeth, his eyelids and all the way up to his throbbing head. His arms threatened collapse as he rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up onto his knees.

"Harry." He repeated with a little more strength.

"Pa-fo, Moo-y, Dadadada, Wo-mi, Mamama." Something sang from the kitchen, followed by resounding clang and a clatter of something that made black spots pop in Tyler's swimming vision.

Just in the kitchen. The boy was just in the kitchen.

Tyler was on his feet faster than his breath or heart could catch up with him. He hit the doorframe to the adjacent room with a force that knocked the wind from him. He tumbled over the threshold, barely holding himself up long enough to slam into the table, leaning into it with screaming ribs. Heat from the exertion burnt him, he roasted while goosebumps crawled up his arms and onto his neck. They stung, but it was worth it. He had found Harry. Sure the child was halfway into a cabinet, there was dried oatmeal and jam across the entire floor, pans and Tupperware were strewn everywhere, but the boy was fine. He was fine. He was totally fine.

Tyler's heartbeat slowed and skittered as it tried to resume normal activities. He slumped onto the table and considered never moving again. The wood was cool against his cheek and he almost let himself drift off completely before he painfully pulled himself back into the present, and the job at hand.

"Up, up, up." He repeated determinedly to himself in the same voice Lily would use as she dragged him out of bed. During those years she was playing mother and older sister after she graduated from Hogwarts and the powers-that-be let him move in with her. She used to pull his blankets off him, like the cruel older sister she was, but then would always make him a warm breakfast like the thoughtful sister she also was. It saddened him that Harry would never have that experience, either of having a mother or a sibling.

Tyler repeated the phrase and pushed himself resolutely off the table, stumbled sideways then arduously clambered around the table. He pulled off a controlled fall to the ground wincing only slightly against his several screaming injuries and leaned against the blue painted cabinets, right next to Harry.

The toddler could play with every pot and pan in the house, what did he care so long as Tyler knew where he was, and that he was safe. He watched, forcing his eyes open as Harry crawled the rest of the way into the cabinet and began pulling muffin tins out onto the kitchen floor, then mixing bowls, and pasta. He played in the dusty oatmeal and banged the pans around. Each noise sent flares through Tyler. Hot was starting to turn to cold. He shivered, but there was no way he could do anything about it. There was no strength left in him to find a warmer place.

Harry discovered a drawer full of hot pads and trivets and made no show of slowing or tiring, then Tyler blinked and the boy was at the refrigerator door with a pan and then was it Tyler's imagination or did the door to the kitchen creak open.

Fever dreams were strange, Tyler realized, as he stared up at the face of Severus for the third time that day. His old friend blurred then solidified once more. The man was taking in the situation and Tyler could tell by the way his nose seemed to thin that he was forcibly repressing a sneer.

It was unfortunate, Tyler thought, because he could really use some of the man's dry wit right now. It would bring some much-needed levity to his current- sitting in oatmeal dust, and pans situation- but Severus seemed uncharacteristically subdued.

"I was worried the potions would have worn off by now," the man murmured as if that explained anything.

Tyler watched him vaguely as he crossed to the high potion's cabinet and pushed bottles around. He pulled his wand out of his pocket and Tyler watched as dark words began writing themselves on the glass. The letters seemed to float onto the bottle in his fever haze.

He shut his eyes momentarily and the next thing he knew Severus was kneeling next to him.

"Pain potion," he explained holding up a bottle of light blue liquid now clearly labeled "Pain potion, part 1".

"Uncork it. The ration is one to two with this." Severus held up a second, smaller bottle with a cream colored potion inside, "wait until it froths and drink it." Severus pulled the same small bottle he had force-fed Tyler with that morning off the table behind them. It was full once more with the steaming potion. Harry banged a small pan against the refrigerator door, and with a jerk, Tyler realized they hadn't eaten dinner.

Severus pressed the potion into his hand and directed him to drink before turning to another, larger bottle containing a clear orange liquid. "Fever reducer." He said pointing to the new label. Tyler tried to keep his eyes open as Severus went through seven more carefully labeled potions, each with new descriptions and instructions embossed on the backs.

The pain potion was helping with everything but the fever and weariness. Severus poured some of the orange potion down his throat and as it began to kick in the exhaustion became uncontrollable. Severus must have noticed because he stopped talking, and replaced all the bottles he had explained, plus some back into the cupboard. He opened the refrigerator Harry had been fighting with and pulled out a boiled egg from the day before. He peeled it with a quick spell, handed it to Harry and without another word left through the same door he had entered through, with not even a scoff. Tyler felt a bit shorted. But as the man left, Tyler couldn't help but wonder if that was a "yes." If that meant he'd keep Harry during the next full moon.

 

* * *

 

That was definitely not a "yes," that definitely did not mean he'd keep Harry during the next full moon, Severus reassured himself. He was sitting at his dining room table, trying to think through his actions. He had been too impulsive. Everything about the day had been impulsive, unstructured. Tyler always mucked things up, always made things more difficult than they should be.

Severus had let his feet take him from the forest to his home and, with the floo, to Tyler's living room. Tyler was gone, the only sign of him being a wad of discarded blankets on the floor. Severus paused by the fireplace, hoping both he and Harry were in the upper floors, asleep. Severus had formulated a bit of a plan in the time it took him to get from the forest to his home. If he did nothing else he needed to label the potions cabinet. That way Tyler could, conceivably, heal himself. He was certain without any potions knowledge Tyler had been completely confused by the contents of the cabinet. If Tyler was upstairs he could sneak into the kitchen, label them, leave a note, and there would be no uncomfortable interactions.

His hopes were crushed by the sound of a pan clattering to the floor one room away. Something was going on in the kitchen. Severus exhaled a long, disappointed breath and began to walk into the kitchen.

His plans hadn't prepared him for the utter disarray of the room and the absolute frailty he saw in Tyler. The floor had been destroyed in much the same way he had feared Harry could have destroyed his that morning. There was dried oatmeal, cracked bits of dried pasta, flour and what appeared to be the entire contents of a home goods store creating a minefield across the room. Harry was off to one side, alternately chewing on a baking pan and banging it against the doors of the muggle refrigerator, barred from access by childproofing locks. Tyler sat a few feet away, barely conscious and clearly shivering against one of the blue painted cabinets. His eyes were focused on Harry, but his brain didn't seem to be making any valuable connections. Severus sucked in his desire to sneer, and then did what he come to do, plus a few things, like giving Tyler a clearly necessary second round of potions and feeding the ravenous toddler.

It was only later, sitting in his dining room, that the horror of the scene truly hit him. It echoed in his head and he couldn't shake the images. Though it was evident in the way Tyler stared at Harry that he cared about this kid, Severus wondered if he could care for him.

He wanted to curse, but it seemed too mundane an act for what he truly wanted to do. He wanted to scream. To fight. He had left the marauders in charge of Tyler for two years, two years, and the boy had not only been attacked by a werewolf (and he could guess which one), but he had been left without a safety net to help him out. The group of reckless, mangy Gryffindors had all gotten themselves thrown in Azkaban or murdered and now Lily's family- Lily's brother, and her son -were left to fend for themselves! How could they have messed up so horribly?

It wasn't okay, and now Tyler was left to pick up the pieces.

Severus swallowed the lump rising in his throat, the one choking him as he realized that he was also there. He was alive, and it was his choice if he was going to help put everything back together. If he would help pick up the last pieces of the Evans family.


	5. Hogwarts

It was three days later when an owl alerted Severus that Dumbledore requested his presence for his first training at Hogwarts.

Three days of brooding, and unpacking, and eating bad food, poorly prepared. He almost managed to forget the full moon, and Harry, and Tyler.

Almost.

But now, with a letter from Dumbledore pinched between his fingers, he realized that this would be his chance to speak to the old Headmaster with regards to his worries about Harry's placement.

He had tossed the issue back and forth in his head for days and finally decided Harry would have to be moved to Petunia's. It was the only option. . . The only option that would keep Severus a safe distance from the child for the foreseeable future. Petunia was stiff, and a bit bigoted, but she would certainly give Harry a perfectly normal upbringing. A perfectly normal upbringing where he wouldn't have to fight for food, or deal with a 19-year-old, werewolf, guardian.

Severus pulled a few books from his shelf, packed them into a neat black bag and apparated to the Hogsmeade gates early the next morning. Frost made the grounds glisten as he walked up the well-beaten path. He moved as briskly as possible, doing anything to avoid thinking about everything that had happened on those grounds. The lake, trees, gardens were all reminders. He averted his eyes and pushed forward, forward, forward until he was on the stairs and through the large front doors. He knew the interior would not bring him any more comfort, but he wasn't expecting the sudden overwhelming smell of wood and cold stone to send spindles of uncomfortable nostalgia prickling into every last nerve ending.

He was back at Hogwarts.

There were a few students milling about on their way to breakfast, or class but it didn't matter, Severus just needed to get to Dumbledore's office. He had been there before, after a particularly awful day in fifth year when he was asked to speak with the Headmaster. Then again, not long ago, to admit things he swore he never would. He turned from the main hall and headed toward Dumbledore's gargoyle, his eyes downcast, the halls holding no warmth, no light for him anymore.

"Licorice," Severus growled, and the guard at Dumbledore's door sprung aside hurriedly, seemingly shocked at the tone in the young man's voice, but when Severus looked up, Dumbledore was already standing before him.

"Severus. You've arrived precisely on time." There was no twinkle in his eyes, none of the façade the old man put up for the benefit of others. He simply gave Severus a once over then swept past him, headed for the Dungeons. It was strange to be one of the few people who had the chance to see past the pleasant act, past the man's carefully constructed character. Of course, Dumbledore was one of the few people on Earth who had seen past Severus's mask, seen his own naked truth. "You'll be with Horace today."

"Yes, sir." Severus agreed catching up to the wizard and matching his swift stride.

"How has the move been?" Dumbledore asked, though he didn't sound particularly interested. He seemed to be checking boxes off a mental list of check-in topics.

"Acceptably," Severus replied equally curtly. The move from his apartment back to Spinner's End was a mess but it wasn't worth his time to get into a conversation about it with a man who didn't care.

"Were you able to locate the books you will need for the next few months."

Severus nodded shortly and motioned to the bag over his shoulder.

"Very good. Is there anything else that I should be aware of?"

Severus suspected he meant _is there anything else related to Death Eaters I should be aware of_ but not only did Severus not have any news on that front, he had other more pressing matters to discuss. He wasn't sure when he would see the Headmaster again so he needed to ask about Harry right now. It wouldn't be terribly out of place, Dumbledore had asked him to help protect the child, after all. Still, the thought of bringing it up twisted knots into the pit of his stomach. He fought the feeling as their feet slapped even patterns on the cold stone floor. They were alone, the halls were empty. Just past this statue, he decided. He would start talking as soon as they passed the statue at the end of the hall. He had to be careful with wording, but he had practiced the conversation, it would be fine.

They passed the statue, and then a picture, and finally as levelly as Severus could manage he asked, "Harry went to Lily's brother correct? I just want to be sure."

"Yes." Dumbledore nodded, looking a bit confused at Severus's interest.

"He's being protected, checked in on occasionally?" Severus continued, barely realizing that his legs felt numb with worry beneath him.

Dumbledore gave him the exact penetrating stare he was trying to avoid, "Harry is very safe, and there are neighbors around keeping an eye out for him as well. If you are worried about Tyler's capabilities I can assure you that I have absolute faith that he will be a fine guardian, and Harry will be safe from harm."

Severus tried not to scoff, but a disgruntled noise still escaped his lips.

"He's protected." Dumbledore continued, "After all someone convinced the Death Eaters that Lily Potter only had the one sister." Dumbledore's eyes almost betrayed some sense of amusement, and Severus's heart sank. Of course his one moment of blind luck had gotten him into this situation.

"Only after that person let her mother be attacked." Severus pointed out quietly. Lily's mother had been his first, true, failure but her dying had satiated the Death Eaters well enough to keep Petunia and Tyler safe and Tyler hidden completely. Though it was little comfort, Severus knew Mrs. Evan would have died for her children, no questions asked.

"War is a nasty business," Dumbledore said softly. His pace slowed just a bit. They were nearing the stairs to the dungeons. Their conversation couldn't last much longer unless they slowed.

"No chance that the boy could be placed with his aunt?" Severus ventured. "I know-" Severus caught himself and corrected, "I knew Lily's family quite well and I never had a great deal of trust in the boy."

Dumbledore watched Severus carefully, his eyes squinting with questions. "Not without a very compelling reason," he finally answered.

Severus wondered how much the Headmaster knew about Tyler's condition. Surely if he knew everything, he wouldn't have dropped the child with him. There were a dozen regulations and more than enough de facto laws preventing werewolves from guardianship. Though Dumbledore had never much bothered with rules relating to those creatures, this was the Boy-Who-Lived, this was Harry Potter! Surely someone would care enough to move him. Severus knew he could let it slip, right then. He could tell the Headmaster, and it would all be over. It would have to be. Dumbledore would have to move Harry.

The silence was weighted with the possibility. Severus could almost feel his shoulders grow heavy with the choice. It took him a moment before he realized they had stopped moving. There was a flurry of noise and chatter coming from behind them. A squad of Gryffindor and Slytherin first years were walking down to their Potions class. Severus had been so distracted by Tyler and Harry over the past few days he hadn't bothered to consider what it would be like to teach at Hogwarts. To teach groups of eleven-year-olds? His brain kept moving along that terrifying train of thought, plowing forward. What would it be like, ten years from now, to teach a skinny boy with a tuft of black hair and Lily Evan's eyes? The boy would be in his classes, roaming the halls, surely getting himself into trouble. No matter what became of the boy at the next full moon, in ten years he would be seeing him in potions classes. The boulder on his shoulders increased exponentially. Realizations strangled him. Would he see the boy in ten years as a stranger? Would he keep him at a safe distance, insult him, like he had his father? Would he hold that grudge so deep in his chest that it would burn onto the little boy he had held only a few nights before? The boy who liked quaffles, and boiled eggs, and would only fall asleep to the sound of old book pages turning.

The last few members of the class were trickling by. A young Gryffindor girl walked by with a book in her hands. She was holding it out for a Slytherin to see. She was talking about an elementary potion's theory but was explaining it very well.

Severus shut his eyes and was lifted away as an image of a boy with bright green eyes, smiling and waving at him darted across his thoughts. He fumbled behind him for the stair railing, dizzy with wonder. His heart felt as if it had floated outside his body. He tried to conjure it again. Lily Evan's eyes on a boy, on Harry, eleven, smiling and waving at him as he raced down a Hogwarts hall. That couldn't truly be a possibility, could it? No child could ever grow to like him even if they spent every full moon together for ten years! And during those ten years, what would they really be doing? Sleeping, eating meals and dealing with all the basics of life.

Then again, Tyler liked him. When they were younger, more than once he had shown up at Severus's house simply wanting to eat sandwiches and juggle stupid objects in his living room. There was nothing special or interesting about their time together. Was that a relationship? Was that friendship? Could that overcome all he had done wrong? And the most important question: could Harry, orphaned, burdened with being The-Boy-Who-Lived, some day, actually forgive him for the hand Severus had had in his parent's death?

"Severus?" Dumbledore forced Severus's attention back to the present. The children had all wandered by, the way was clear. "Was there something you wanted to say?"

He could be a stranger to Harry, or, maybe, a friend… a distant, distant, friend, but one nonetheless.

He shut his mouth deciding not to tell Dumbledore about Tyler's particular problem. He needed to think about this. He needed to consider his options.

Severus shook his head, and he and Dumbledore continued to Professor Slughorn's classroom.

 

* * *

 

Professor Slughorn had a special place in his heart for Lily Evan, Severus was reminded of this, time and time again over the next nine hours. Severus survived his time with the old potions master- sure, he had briefly considered stabbing his own hand with a knife to manage the pain of the situation, but he hadn't - and the day eventually rolled to a quiet end.

Dumbledore arrived at the door to the potions lab right before dinner. "You are welcome to stay and eat Severus," he offered. Lunch had been spectacular, though incredibly awkward. The temptation to stay for a meal was overwhelming, but so was the desire to leave. He was worried any longer in the castle would mean more uncomfortable conversations, more general lamenting about his once-best-friend, more awkward questions about his allegiances.

"No thank you. I'll be seeing you, sir," he said instead, slipping by the Headmaster and out into the dark hallway.

Severus left the castle at a slightly slower pace than a hippogriff on a mission. As he strode toward the front doors he battled his wildly running imagination, as it conjured the very possible images of Harry Potter in all the places he and Lily used to frequent; Hallways where they would do homework before class, stones they tripped over, paintings they critiqued between howls of laughter. He left the building, and the yard opened up to him, reminding him of warm walks to the greenhouses and making snow angels in the dead of winter.

He reached the gate in an oddly uplifted mood. A mood he was trying desperately to stifle with reality. Harry was just a baby- and James Potter's baby at that. No matter how much Harry was like Lily, it couldn't change that basic fact.

More so, it couldn't change what Severus had done.

He apparated to his living room, but started at the sound of voices in the kitchen. His wand was immediately at the ready. He slipped to the wall, sneaking until he could look around the corner and into the dining room.

It was only Tyler. Of course, it was Tyler! Then - What was he doing here?

Severus peaked out again. Tyler was playing a peek-a-boo tag game around the old chairs with a giggling Harry. Tyler winced as he bent and hid, but his smile was more than wide enough to cover any pain. He looked good, healthy. Across the room Harry squealed in delight as he toddled around, sometimes chasing, sometimes pointing but always happy. Tyler knelt to hide under the table, and Severus took a moment to appreciate the sight before making his presence noticed.

"What are you doing in my house?"

Tyler's head shot up, cracking on the underside of the table. He almost cursed, covered his head and slowly wiggled out from the tangle of chairs.

"Hey Sev," he said as he got slowly to his feet, "I thought we should talk."

"So you broke into my house?" Severus bit out.

Tyler frowned for just a second before perking up with a thought, "I brought cookies!"


	6. Always

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus and Tyler have a heart-to-heart.

Severus stared. Tyler was still standing a few feet to the side of his kitchen table, rubbing his hands through his shaggy black hair, and looking only slightly apologetic. "I thought we needed to talk," the boy tried to explain.

"You broke into my house." Severus was still dumbfounded. Ten minutes ago he was sure it wasn't possible to break into his house, and now that a muggle with a toddler had done it, he was reevaluating his entire security system.

Tyler shrugged and fiddled with a piece of loose string hanging from his jacket until Severus's glare broke him.

"It's important, and I'm good with a lockpick because there was one in that magic kit you and Lily got me when I was ten, and I've snuck into this place so many tim-"

"I know." It had been a weekly occurrence the summer after his seventh year. "You still broke in," he chastised. Severus had done his best to guard his house against wizards and witches and any other manner of magical beings. It was only at that moment that he realized the wide gap in his security that allowed Tyler to break in through the front door. Wizards don't use lockpicks.

"It was cold outside and I didn't think you'd let me in otherwise."

"I wouldn't have. I told you to stay away from here."

"Your exact words were to not bring Harry here at the next full moon."

"And then I said never to speak to me again."

"Are you sure you didn't just think that very loudly," Tyler asked. He sounded skeptical.

Severus glared.

"On the other hand I was very out-of-it during that particular conversation… Did you end up enchanting a blue armadillo puppet… Oh no, of course not, that was the fever." Tyler's face scrunched up thoughtfully.

"What do you think we need to talk about?" Severus asked, resigning himself to at least hearing what the boy wanted.

Tyler distractedly rubbed the bump on his head then admitted, "I dunno." He brought his hand down. "I just feel like we haven't talked in what? Two years?" He took a deep breath. "I, at least, owe you an explanation for-" Tyler gestured around himself silently meaning, everything, and that one thing specifically.

"I don't care."

"Okay," Tyler said uncertainly. Harry toddled over to his pant leg and began pulling and hobbling around his feet, begging for attention. Tyler stood uncomfortably in Severus's dining room, under his gaze, clearly a little uncomfortable but not making a move to leave. He picked Harry up off the floor and planted a smothering kiss on his cheek. He soaked in the funny smile Harry gave him before turning back to Severus.

"The cookies are double chocolate chip, which I know were Lily's favorite, but they were also kind of your favorite, for a while." Tyler tucked Harry tighter against his hip then walked into the kitchen. He brought back a Tupperware dish full to bursting with warm brown cookies, nearly as nice looking as something the House elves could have made. Except the house elves rarely made double chocolate chip cookies with Mrs. Evan's secret recipe.

Severus's stomach rumbled. Besides lunch that day, he hadn't eaten anything that tasted good in three weeks. It was tempting, so, so tempting to reach out and take one, but if he did he knew he would be agreeing to the conversation at hand. He looked up and Tyler was smiling.

"I can see it in your eyes, you want one," he taunted in a sing-song voice.

Severus growled from the back of his throat and pushed past the boy to get into the dining room and then the kitchen.

"I can make some grilled cheese instead," Tyler called after him. "It's a specialty of mine now. Add a few slices of ham and you've actually got a decent meal."

Severus didn't reply as he swept around the room.

"I'll make you a deal," Tyler said, following him into the kitchen"How about this? You let me cook something actually edible-- and don't lie I saw your rubbish when Harry tried to crawl in it -- you've only been eating canned soup and bread- and in return, you get to provide the ingredients and alcohol. That way you won't have to feel like you're giving in to me or anything. It's just like I'm hired help. It'll be me saying 'thank you' for saving mine and probably Harry's lives."

Severus hadn't found anything in the kitchen to pretend to do. He hadn't found anything he wanted to cook or swallow in an attempt at eating to shut up his noisy stomach. Did he have that much pride or shame that he would give up a cooked meal all to avoid Tyler and Harry? His stomach grumbled and he slammed the last cabinet door shut and drawled, "Get out of my house" before stalking into the living room.

"How do you feel about pie?" Tyler hadn't left the kitchen, and Severus could hear him pulling things out of his cabinets. "Oh Firewhisky."

Severus took a deep breath. Apparently, it would take a crowbar to get the boy to leave. He fingered his wand but when Tyler quieted, and all Severus could hear were the sounds of a knife on a cutting board, he released his grip.

If the boy was going to stay he might as well make himself useful.

 

Dinner was meatloaf, roasted potatoes and peas. Severus wasn't sure where the boy had found the ingredients to make the meal (he suspected Tyler had brought them) and he really didn't know when the boy had learned to cook. Nonetheless, his mouth was watering before he wandered into the dining room at Tyler's summoning.

There were one and a half places set when he stepped around the corner. Tyler was already at the table, Harry on his lap as the toddler either fought with, or ate the food in front of him; it was hard to tell which. Across the table was a plate laden with an amazing looking meal. Nothing sat before Tyler.

"What will you be eating then?" Severus asked.

Tyler looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. He shrugged, "You know I'm never hungry after deaths."

Severus didn't sit down. He turned and walked into the kitchen. The meatloaf and the side of peas and potatoes were sitting on the stove. He dished out a plate, found a fork, and swept back into the dining room to set food before Lily Evan's pathetic younger brother.

Tyler pulled a face.

"Lily and I force fed you an entire plate of take-out rice once. I would prefer never to have to relive that," Severus said, and a jolt of surprise shot through his core at the sound of Lily's name rolling so easily off his tongue. He was still reeling as he walked around the table and sat down just in time to hide the fact that his knees were giving out beneath him.

Tyler watched him, not touching his food. He was surely remembering the rice incident. That was after his father's funeral. After his mother's funeral Severus had only managed to feed him chips and Bertie Botts Beans before dragging him, still mostly drunk, back to Petunia's place.

"Eat" Severus demanded again and Tyler reluctantly retrieved his fork from the table. Both men took tentative bites of their dinner.Severus inwardly sighing with delight at the warm meal.

It didn't matter that it wasn't as good as Hogwarts food, at this point in his life anything not out of a box or can was blessed, and this was reminiscent of something? Severus couldn't place it for a few bites then he remembered starkly, dinners with the Evans. He and the three children spread out along either side of the table between Mrs. and Mrs. Evans. Her unique blend of spices, so unlike the bland food his mother served.

This meal tasted like home. The next bite was hard to swallow around the lump in his throat, but he kept eating. It was too good to waste.

They didn't speak for several minutes, but the silence was easily filled with Harry's babbling, and Tyler's mumbled responses between forkfuls of potatoes. Tyler cleared his plate just as Harry became more interested in spreading peas around the table than eating them. Tyler took him to the kitchen to rinse him off and came back to sit lazily in his chair, letting Harry wander around the floor at his feet. Severus could tell he was preparing himself for the conversation at hand, but it took another five minutes before he finally spat out his thoughts.

"It wasn't Lupin."

Severus took a few moments of food-coma-brain-muddled confusion to figure out what he meant. Then realization dawned on him. "The lycanthropy?"

"I know you're probably mad at them for letting me get into trouble, so I thought I'd tell you it wasn't their fault."

"Somehow I doubt that." Severus put his fork down and leaned back in his chair. He was annoyed that Tyler knew what he had been thinking earlier that week.

"I was dumb," Tyler explained. "I knew there was a war, and I wanted to help. I wanted to fight. Everyone else was."

Severus's stomach knotted. Everyone else was fighting, though not necessarily on the same side.

"They were always trying to keep me out of everything, and it bothered me. Sirius used to lock me upstairs when they were talking. Like a weird silence bubble thing. I would sit at the top of the stairs and try to lipread. Funnily enough, Sirius was the easiest to read. He talked with this hands." Tyler waved his fingers in the air, doing a surprisingly good imitation of the convict.

"They were a bothersome group," Severus agreed dryly. Tyler smirked. Quite a few summer conversations between Severus and Lily had revolved around the very group of people Lily ended up calling family.

"I was annoyed that they didn't believe I could be helpful but, well they couldn't keep everything from me because at some point I heard that werewolves…" Tyler took a deep breath, and a flicker of embarrassment crossed his face, something Severus saw so rarely that it was hard to identify on the young man, "I heard that werewolves weren't interested in muggles. We weren't as tasty as wizards or something. I took this to mean I was invisible to them. I mean how many muggles have you heard of being turned into werewolves? Like none, right?" Tyler paused and added, as a sidebar. "Turns out that's because if a werewolf gets a hold of a muggle, they eat us like we're a nice side dish at a buffet."

Severus leveled a stare at him, waiting for him to continue.

Tyler sighed and got to the point. "I don't know why I did it. I was being an idiot, but I found out that Captain flippy-hair" Severus almost smiled at Tyler's name for Sirius, "-was wondering what Remus was getting up to. He was hanging out with werewolves all the time and I stupidly thought that I could find out because I was invisible. Right? I thought if I found out they would finally let me help them win the war and… come on you know I think wizards are cool!" Tyler reminded with a whine.

Severus made a motion for Tyler to continue and the boy acquiesced,

"I found out where Remus was going to be thanks to my sneaky little brother powers and I snuck out and followed him on a full moon night. I then pretended to be one of them. Dumb idea. Well, Remus saw me, just as the moon was rising. He apparated back to the house, at huge risk to everyone, and managed to tell James what was happening while Sirius was dragging him to the basement. James came and got me. I was half a chew toy at that point."

"And you lived?"

"Barely. Check this out." Tyler started to pull up the side of his shirt to show off a scar but Severus put his hand up begging him to stop.

"Don't. I've seen it." Severus didn't want to be reminded of the morning he had discovered Tyler half dead in the basement.

Tyler pulled his shirt down, "Oh, yeah…" His face burnt red but he managed to hide his embarrassment by staring at the table, waiting patiently for Severus's verdict on his actions.

"You're an idiot," Severus agreed slowly. He too was looking at the table, slowly thinking through his next steps. Thinking through the truth that needed to come out. "But only the second biggest idiot in the room," he said before he could lose his nerve.

Tyler's brow furrowed in confusion, then mild annoyance. "Hey! Don't say that about Harry," he said, though the boy was, at that very moment, happily chewing on the leg of a dining room chair.

"Not Harry," Severus cut in. Guilt was bubbling up in him, and he had to come clean. "I'm the idiot. I joined the wrong side of the war Moss. I am- I was… a Death Eater." Tyler needed to know. Needed to understand why Severus shouldn't - couldn't be involved in their lives.

"That can't be healthy."

Severus stared until Tyler clarified.

"Eating death- don't you catch whatever they died from?"

Severus's eyes widened as he realized what Tyler was thinking. "Are you telling me after years living with your sister you don't know what a Death Eater is?" Severus demanded.

Tyler's lip curled into a dopey smile and Severus growled at being played.

Tyler enjoyed the joke for just a second before letting his face fall seriously. "I know what you were," he admitted in a weary monotone. He rose from his seat and wandered to the kitchen returning moments later with the bottle of Firewhisky and two teacups. "Couldn't find glasses," he said.

Severus stared as Tyler poured a bit of the burning amber drink into each cup. He slid one across the table and Severus took the drink numbly.

The boy downed the first glass with a hiss and poured himself a second. He sipped at it then said,

"When Dumbledore dropped Harry off I asked if it was you," Tyler paused looking apologetic. "I asked if you had killed them." Tyler was clearly having trouble replaying the night in his head. Severus's own stomach was turning at the memory of November 1st.

"I was so worried it was you and then he said it was…he said it was Sirius." The silence that followed the name stretched out. The pair had never been the biggest fans of Sirius Black, from what Severus knew James Potter had only grown on Tyler in the past few years, but they both knew, somewhere deep in their humanity what it meant that the one person James Potter trusted most in the world had betrayed him. The murderer wasn't Severus, who James and Sirius had fought with for years, it wasn't a Slytherin, it wasn't even a stranger, it was the best friend.

Severus took a sip of his drink. As promised on the bottle it bit like fire, burned down his throat and settled in his stomach.

Tyler took in a steadying breath and forced out,

"I'm not stupid Severus. Between Sirius's hints and a few Daily Profit articles, I figured out what you were at about the same time Lily said I couldn't visit you anymore." Tyler squinted at Severus and added. "That was only two years ago though, and you two hadn't spoken since fifth year."

Severus moved to protest, out of old habit. He and Lily lied to Tyler for years. They pretended to be distant friends long after they had split. Severus stopped himself. Truths were spilling out left, and right and he couldn't keep playing old games with people who were long gone.

"That means I was visiting you well after you had joined up with the Death Eaters," Tyler concluded. Severus knew that, of course, but it was jarring to see the realizations flickering across Tyler's face. He was trying to connect the dots for Severus, lead him to understanding. Severus would wait, but before Tyler could continue Harry toddled back over to demand something at his knee.

Tyler easily picked the boy off the ground and smothering him with more kisses. To Severus it seemed like an automatic reflex that Tyler had; Pick Harry up, kiss him on his chubby cheeks. Tyler mumbled something to the boy and set him quietly back down. Harry garbled a few words then toddled off toward the kitchen, surely in search of his quaffle toy, or the Tupperware the child loved so much. Tyler lifted the bottle of Firewhisky from the table and silently followed the child.

Severus considered leaving him be, but he needed to know why, if Tyler knew the truth, he had come back. He rose from his seat and walked around the table to stand at the kitchen door. Harry was strategically opening every cupboard, examining it for something to break, then closing it again with a slap of wood hitting wood. Tyler leaned up against the counter, then with reckless abandon slid down onto the floor to sit at his nephew's level.

Severus stared. How could Tyler have known, how could he have shown up at his door anyway? Didn't he understand who the Death Eaters were, what they did? When Severus came home he was trying to sort out whether or not he should tell Tyler about what he had done. He was planning a test. If Tyler could stand even being in the same room with him after hearing what he had done it would be a miracle, but here he was, sitting on his kitchen floor seemingly unfazed by the largest revolution Severus felt he could throw at him. The image of the eleven-year-old Harry floated back up and Severus stiffened. Tyler looked over.

"I visited you," he said, "year after year, and you never harmed a hair on my head. You were a Death Eater when my mom died. You gave me Butterbeer and chips and walked me back to Petunias." Tyler looked up at him with confusion in his eyes, but things were starting to make sense to Severus.

"Lily would have done anything, and I mean anything for me. James literally fought off a pack of wolves to save my life. The whole damn Order would have been up in arms to rescue me if you had so much as handcuffed me to a pipe in your house. I would have been perfect bait."

Harry had wandered over to Tyler to pick at his hair and poke his chubby fingers at his mouth. Tyler took it in stride smiling and nipping his fingers playfully, absorbed again in the small child. "Dumbledore said the Death Eaters didn't know I existed, which is odd if you were one of them." Tyler turned his attention from Harry to stare with two watery eyes up at him.

The alcohol seemed to be seeping into the younger man but Severus didn't feel nearly drunk enough. He put back the rest of his glass, and leaned down to take the bottle from Tyler's side. He poured himself another drink and paced the kitchen while he sipped. After too long with Tyler's eyes following him, back and forth, and back and forth, Severus slowed. Harry crawled onto Tyler's lap and leaned into him. Severus felt a similar warmth against his chest, and though he was pretty sure it was the Firewhisky he slowed, then in an uncharacteristic bought of warmth he sat down on the floor next to Tyler.

"You didn't hurt me." Tyler repeated.

Harry slipped a little sideways until his small frame was leaning into Severus's side. It surprised Harry as much as Severus, and a moment later, bright green eyes blinked up at him. Severus tried to relax as Harry cooed at him, but it was hard to breathe with him there. The uncanny glow that seemed to follow Harry around was warming him from the inside in a way the Firewhisky wasn't. Severus relaxed slowly into the cabinet.

After a few moments of silence, Tyler moved, and Harry fell the rest of the way onto their laps.

Severus tensed again, worried Tyler would readjust and pull Harry up off his lap, but he didn't move. He just said, "I was supposed to trust Sirius, but you're the one who has always been there for me."

"Always?" Severus repeated. The word struck him. He didn't feel that way. He felt like he had repeatedly failed the Evans family. If he had truly always been there, he would have been able to save Mrs. Evans and Lily- wonderful Lily- before anything bad had happened to them.

"Always," Tyler confirmed without question. "and now you have a chance to take care of the most important part of Lily's life and I have to believe that you would never hurt him. I trust you." Tyler's eyes were digging into him. Severus tried to return the stare, but it was like looking into the sun. He found himself looking somewhere past the young man, at the brown cabinets beyond.

"Sev?"

Severus pulled his eyes over. Green pools stared back and Severus's heart constricted painfully.

"You mean that?" Severus asked. He had to be sure, he had to be 100% sure that Tyler trusted him, that there was even the slimmest chance that years from now Harry could trust him too.

"I'm terrible at lying Sev," Tyler reminded. They stared at one another until Tyler asked, "Will you watch him?"

There it was, the question. The big one and they were both a little drunk and both leaning heavily against the kitchen cabinets and Harry was curled up asleep on their laps, his chest rising and falling peacefully as he dozed off and there were all the possibilities splayed out before him immense and intimidating, and Tyler was asking him the most important question in the world.

He swallowed.

"Yeah, I'll watch him," he finally realized aloud, because he had known all along that he would say "yes".

He would always say yes to an Evans.

He didn't even fight it as Tyler slumped onto his shoulder, exhausted and relieved.


	7. Ignore the Peril

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time has passed, and as the reality of Severus's new situation sinks in, so does his fear about protecting the Boy Who Lived.

Harry James Potter's second birthday was on July 31st. From what Severus knew the party had been small. Just Tyler and Harry. In a letter, Lily's little brother had written,

"Mr. Dursely called to cancel. Dudley's sick and the begonia's need weeding. They sent a gift!"

Petunia, Severus suspected, had trouble looking at Harry; Had trouble being in the house where Lily had once lived, surrounded by pictures of the life Lily had left her for.

Merlin knew he did.

The letter had ended: "Are you still interested in birthday cake on the 4th? It's chocolate!"

Tyler and Severus planned to celebrate the birthday a few days late when Severus would be around anyway for the full moon. He wrote back a grudging "yes" hoping Tyler wouldn't be up for it. The moons had gotten better for a few months, but then July had been a disaster and Severus suspected nothing would be okay again until after Halloween.

Anniversaries and dates kept pecking at them. Lily's birthday in January, Harry's in July. October was looming, and after that, they started the countdown until Harry had lived longer with Tyler than he had with his own parents. James and Lily were alive for exactly 15 months of Harry's life. Tyler had been Harry's guardian for 9 months now. The 15-month mark wasn't far off.

In watching the boy, Severus began to wonder if Harry had any memories of his parents, or if the Potter's had started drifting away to that place where dreams go when you wake up.

And maybe that was okay.

They never said any of this out loud. They skirted around it, leaving conversations hanging at the end of accidental sentences and stories that trailed off when they remembered who had been there. There was an unspoken agreement not to fall apart. Not to cry in front of each other, because if one of them fell apart, then they both would.

Then again Tyler was too busy to break down, and Severus wasn't sure he could. So they moved through the motions of life, month after month, sleepwalking to survive. They pushed away their own tears as often as they wiped away Harry's. They bucked up and walked on, if not for Harry's sake, then their own.

But grief had a weird way of twisting a mind and Severus found himself concentrating his efforts not in sorrow or grief, but in haphazard worry. In unpinned fear.

In laws and regulations.

But when it came to werewolves, there was too much contradicting information. There were books, and pamphlets, and handouts. There were chapters in almost wholly unrelated books and entire volumes written well before anyone knew anything about them. And that's where Severus found himself concentrating his grief: In rumors about the wolf that stalked Tyler and, by association, him.

Severus got his hands on as many pieces of information as he could without looking suspicious. The Hogwarts library was easy. Madam Pince knew he was interested in Defense Against the Dark Arts so she didn't ask any questions when he walked out of the restricted section with a stack of book tucked under each arm.

The Beast office at the ministry didn't care what visitors did and Severus had slipped more pamphlets up his sleeve in three minutes than he had read in his entire life. The Beings office was full of chatty witches who tried to drag him into conversations about the Daily Profit and the continuing Death Eater trials. He grabbed a few pieces of related literature and snuck off as quickly as possible. The last thing he wanted to do was to talk about the trials.

Then again, maybe the trials were just another reason he was burying himself in this work? Avery had gotten off, and Narcissa had invited him around for tea. Maybe it was fear that the once-Death Eaters would find something out. That they would wonder about the wrong thing at the wrong time, but he was doing his best to stay scarce, and locking himself in his house with books was a good way to achieve scarcity. His only fear now was that they would knock on his door on the wrong night and then the pieces of Tyler and Harry's unsteady support system would come crashing down.

Or perhaps he buried himself to ignore Tyler. To ignore how much he appreciated the premade meat pies, artisan sandwiches and rich pasta dishes that had been mysteriously filling his cabinets over the last seven months. He tore through books to bury the terrifying fact that he might care about the boy.

Of course, what it really came down to was fear.

Fear that the Death Eaters or the ministry would catch Tyler and take Harry from them. But Severus only admitted that to himself on the darkest nights, when grief and terror chased away any chance of sleep.

He told himself someone had to be worried. Tyler was too caught up with, if not raising a child, at least keeping one alive. Which was probably for the best because when he wasn't wrangling a child he was stress cooking. The food he left around Severus's home like a well-trained house-elf as thank yous was unnecessary, but Severus suspected cooking was Tyler's version of a sleepless night. While Severus laid awake fighting grief, Tyler cooked. So the boy was adamant about leaving Severus meals, and Severus was hungry.

He comforted himself knowing Hogwarts would be back in session in a month and Tyler would soon have no reason to waste his money on anything besides Harry. In fact, in a few months, Severus would have enough to begin sending food and goods in the opposite direction. Merlin knew they needed it. Harry had outgrown the small collection of clothes that had been rescued from Godric's Hollow, and though Petunia had lovingly offered up Dudley's hand-me-downs they were far from the right size for the scrawny toddler.

Severus rubbed a hand over his face. How had he gotten to this point? The point where he was worried about the clothes James Potter's son was wearing. The point where he was imagining spending his paycheck on toys and food and clothes?

But that was his job wasn't it? The reason he was working at Hogwarts, the deal he had made with Dumbledore. Tyler had simply managed to pull him into a deeper layer of hell by asking him to babysit.

He breathed out an exasperated, disappointed breath and looked across the room to the table of books he had amassed. They were all about werewolves and they were all contradictory. The laws about child guardianship, safety, spells, there were too many, and yet not enough and Severus's head was spinning with the knowledge. He knew that when it boiled down to it, there were no true laws, and whatever was written would be twisted in whatever direction pleased the court. Which meant if Tyler was ever caught Harry would be taken away from him quicker than you could say "Newt Scamander."

They had talked about it, of course. Severus had tried to tell Tyler time and time again to have a plan, something in case they found out about him being a werewolf. Something to protect him, but Tyler had shrugged it off, unconcerned. Protected as he usually was from the real world by others he didn't realize his peril.

Protecting Tyler was his job, but there was nothing here that could protect them, and Severus knew it.

He needed a break.

A long one…but he knew it wasn't coming so instead he settled for running errands. He still needed to pick up a few potion materials from Knockturn Alley before the beginning of the semester, perhaps that would be enough of a distraction before he would spiral back into desperate research.

He checked his coin pouch to make sure he had enough for his purchases and left through the floo.

Knockturn Alley boiled under the hot August air. They hadn't seen rain in days, and everywhere he looked plants seemed to be shriveling. Not that plants in Knockturn Alley thrived, but they certainly weren't supposed to be completely brown and scraggly.

The apothecary was squeezed between a shady fortune teller's office and a pawn shop that couldn't have sold much that wasn't stolen. Severus exhaled gratefully as he stepped out of the summer heat and into the dark of the store. The witch behind the counter barely flicked her eyes up from a copy of Witch Weekly. Blond tresses soon obscured her face from view, and her black nails picked up their rhythmic tapping on the dark wooden counter.

The entire place was dreary. To preserve many of the ingredients the windows had been spelled to black, and the only light came from flickering blue candles placed too far apart down the many aisles. Severus pulled out his list and turned right into a maze of shelves lined with pickled limbs in jars of green and grey liquid. He read labels as he passed, admiring how well some of the ingredients were preserved, how fresh they looked, and how neatly they had been packaged. As disinterested as the store owner looked, she knew her stuff. He had only pulled one bottle from the shelf- as cool to the touch as a bottle of manticore fangs- when a voice hissed his name out of the shadows, sending the skin on Severus's back crawling away from the sound.

"Carrow," Severus replied, equally cooly. If there was one ex-Death Eater Severus was looking forward to seeing the least, it was Carrow.

There was a humorless laugh from the other end of the aisle before the lithe form of the man became visible. He had thinned out in the stress of the trials and if Severus wasn't mistaken there were strands of grey in the man's otherwise youthful brown hair.

"What brings you out of hiding? People have been saying you fell off the face of the earth," Carrow said. "Fell right off the earth and into the hands of Headmaster Dumbledick." Carrow's weak grey eyes were accusing.

Severus knew he needed to play his cards just right. He had been avoiding just these types of situations for over a year because of his precarious situation. Yes, Dumbledore had gotten him off. Yes, in a way he was on Dumbledore's side, but the old wizard was also counting on him to keep in good standing with the less savory sides of the magical world. Up until now, he had barely been keeping in touch with Mulciber and Avery, let alone the rest of the Death Eaters. In his defense, most of them were avoiding each other until the chips fell and they knew who was safe to associate with, but Severus had taken the silence to a new level.

"Just because I'm working for Dumbledore doesn't mean I've fallen off the face of the earth," Severus responded.

"So it's true. You've gone soft, working for that old Buffoon."

"He is a buffoon, but he pays, and unlike your delightful girlfriend I'm not rotting in Azkaban so I don't see the problem with my situation. We don't all have parents who can buy our way out of prison." Severus said. "I see you've done well though, getting back into the ministry." Severus turned over a jar of a particularly gruesome looking specimen and pretended to read the tag.

"I'm managing." Carrow licked his teeth in the way Severus particularly disliked. "We're actually rather busy at the moment, working on the trials."

"What would someone from the werewolf capture unit have to do with the trials?" Severus asked. He hadn't kept close contact with any of Lord Voldemort's followers, but he had kept tabs on them. He picked out gossip where he could get it, reading between the lines in the daily profit and tuning his ears in when he was out and about.

Carrow was in the werewolf capture unit, ironically arresting those Voldemort said he would protect. Carrow helped in the arrest of the once-leader of one of Voldemort's werewolf packs. His name had been in the news article. Putting the pieces together had been easy. Learning that Carrow's sister was sharpening her teeth on other out-of-luck souls in the Beast Division had been a little more difficult, but he'd stumbled on the answer eventually. He had caught a glimpse of her when he visited the office but managed to slip out of sight before being noticed.

Carrow laughed a throaty laugh and reminded Severus, "Lupin is still on the loose, and he's wanted with ties to the ol' Sirius Black."

Severus's stomach dropped. He had almost completely forgotten about Lupin. It was easier to pin all of his hatred on someone who was already rotting in Azkaban. To pin everything on Sirius Black, the man who had taunted him, almost killed him. The man who actually went through with betraying his best friend, and worse- Severus's heart still constricted after all these months- Lily Evans.

Severus suspected Remus had something to do with the murders. How could he not? The Marauders were thick as thieves and there was no way a werewolf, and the only living friend of Sirius Black's wasn't in on the scheme. Carrow's words lit a fire in Severus's heart, a new rage. He stuffed it deep down, not letting it show on his face as he turned to the other man. "I'm sure he's a slippery one to catch. He was always very good at Defense Against the Dark Arts, probably because he had such an intimate knowledge of it."

"Hmm. You seem to know a lot about him," Carrow accused dryly.

"We were in the same year at Hogwarts, it was hard not to know these things." Severus restocked the jar and stepped around Carrow. There were still things he needed to buy after all.

"You'll let me know then, if you here rumors of him?"

"Of course," Severus agreed. Nothing would be more satisfying to him than turning Lupin over to Carrow's cold little hands. Severus had seen what Carrow had done to muggles during the war. He was restricted by the ministry's laws now, but Carrow was creative, and Severus had faith that Lupin would get what was coming to him.

Carrow smiled and slipped back into the dark of the store. Severus finished his shopping as quickly as possible.

 

* * *

 

"B… That one."

Severus's hand hovered over a bishop.

"No the horsy one next to it."

Tyler could see the fury rise in Severus's face at the misnaming of the chess piece. He flashed Severus a knowing smile that was not reciprocated, and Severus moved his finger a few centimeters to the side and stared.

Tyler nodded and answered though his voice still rough and nasally from the full moon two nights before, "Yup that one, like two forward and one that way." He pointed his index finger to the left and Severus moved the piece. It whinnied and pranced around. Off to the side, Harry giggled, and Tyler couldn't help but smile. The boy was growing, he must have shot up half an inch since he turned him over to Severus a few days ago. Tyler tried not to think about it. Instead, he shut his eyes and worked his weary brain into remembering the series of moves he was planning next.

Tyler loved playing wizard's chess. None of the pieces listened to him, but they could still be moved manually when he wasn't wrapped in four layers of blankets on the couch. When he wasn't feeling awful, he could even, sometimes, beat Severus at a match. The other man didn't find opportunities to play against others very often and to Tyler's amusement and Severus's shock he had found himself rather good at the game.

Across the table Severus directed his own bishop to destroy a rook and Tyler let his head drop against the couch. The rook crumpled and slouched off the edge of the board. Harry squealed and Tyler's head shot up from the cushion. That wasn't an amused laugh, it was an angry one. He managed to see the chess table just in time for two toddler hands to smash every piece off the board in an unscheduled tantrum.

"What on earth?" Tyler stared, surprised at the venom in the kid's fight. Severus too seemed startled. He backed off from the coffee table and watched the scene. Harry screamed again and slapped the table. Tyler untangled himself from the blankets, fighting sore muscles and bandages, to reach out and pull Harry's hands away. "No, Harry. No. Gentle." The boy screamed a little but didn't put up much of a fight. He whined as Tyler picked him up and pulled him onto his lap.

"Harry what's wrong?" 

Harry kicked out at the table, demanding to be put down, and when Tyler acquiesced the boy flopped onto the ground and poked at a grumbling and bewildered bishop.

Tyler stared for a second then looked up at Severus apologetically, "I guess that's game over?" he said. "Sorry."

Severus nodded but didn't say anything. Tyler stared at the small boy as Severus began to pick up the pieces scattered on the ground. It was hard to fathom what was going on in the mind of a two-year-old. Sure, these were the terrible twos, but he was also staring at a boy who had lost everything in the last year, and Tyler didn't know if he was acting worse than he should be. He slumped back onto the couch with a groan.

He stayed there until Severus had kindly replaced all the pieces into their small velvet bag and set the chess board back onto a high shelf.

"Will you stay for dinner?" Tyler asked pulling Harry off the ground and onto his lap again.

"I'll pass."

"I'll set you a place. It's casserole," Tyler said. He struggled to his feet, still holding Harry. "Lord boy when did you swallow a bowling ball?"

Harry was heavy, but maybe it was just his weak arms. Either way, by the time they reached the door to the kitchen Tyler had set him back on the ground with a groan. He limped the rest of the way into the kitchen and pulled three plates from a cabinet. "You want something to drink?" He called back into the living room.

"I'm not staying," Severus repeated.

"Lemonade it is."

"I have things to get done."

"I know, I know, you have a busy life." Tyler waved off his protest.

"I actually have to have everything in my new office before next week," Severus said.

"School doesn't start for a month."

"Next week," Severus repeated, finally entering the kitchen.

"So. That's next week." Tyler said.

"Yes, and there's a lot of packing that needs done before then."

"Do it after you eat," Tyler insisted. He limped across the room and pulled a still half-frozen casserole from the counter. He hobbled back to the oven and slipped the dish in, cranking the heat up and hoping it warmed quickly.

Behind him Severus was fiddling with the pile of papers and mugs that were always strewn across the kitchen table. A tactic for not leaving, but also not agreeing to stay.

"Looking at my mess?" Tyler smirked. Severus had picked up a sheet and was glancing over it, looking bored.

"You make an art form out of being a complete slob," Severus drawled.

"Sorry." Tyler said, "I didn't get that cleaned up before everything went funny." He leaned back against the counter to take weight off his ankle and as he did he realized Severus was looking very interested at the paper in his hands. There was a beat then Tyler's heart skipped as he remembered what he was doing when things "went funny." He snatched the sheet from Severus's hand leaving a small piece of white paper clutched between the man's fingers. Severus didn't need to see bank statements.

Tyler quickly gathered the rest of the papers up and heaved them onto the counter out of Severus's line of site. Before the other man could say anything, Tyler handed over a stack of plates and began pulling silverware from a drawer.

"Here make yourself useful," Tyler directed.

Severus's head tilted to the side, a clear sign of interest, but he followed Tyler's instructions.

"You want some toast?" Tyler asked wincing as he reached to pull bread from a top counter. Harry was fussing at his ankles.

"Toast? I thought we were having Casserole."

"We are, but Harry wants toast, and he's been pretty exclusively eating that for three days so…" Tyler shrugged and painstakingly untwisted a tie from the end of the bread bag. His fingers were still betraying him with joint pain and shakes.

He could feel Severus's eyes on his back, and tried to hide his wince as he set bread in the toaster and limped the loaf back into the proper counter. Severus's eyes were still on him. He turned, "What are you thinking so deeply about?" Tyler asked.

"I- Have you had any contact with Lupin lately?"

That was an odd question, and seemingly out of the blue, but Tyler answered, "No, why?"

Harry grabbed at his pants, and Tyler turned away from Severus. The toaster popped and he plucked up the bread, slathered jam onto it and handed half down to Harry who began chewing on it happily.

"He's disappeared," Severus clarified. The man's eyes slid to the stack of Daily Profits Tyler had swept from the table along with the bank statements. Tyler knew about Lupin, he just tried not to think about it too much.

"Not a word from him." Tyler took a bite from the other half of the bread. "He basically lived here, if anyone were going to see him it would be me, and nada."

Severus eyed him suspiciously. Tyler made an act of eyeing him back until a smile cracked across his face, "No one has seen Remus in months," he laughed out. His tone was somewhere between upset and disinterested. Tyler had always liked Remus, even when he was still adjusting to life with Lily's new friends. Severus was giving him a strange look so he tried to straighten out his face, keep his voice even. Severus knew every one of his tells. Tyler had to work hard to lie to him.

"You do know he's wanted…that we're looking for him?"

Tyler shuffled, fidgeted until he winced and had to grab the counter to hold himself steady. He had to say something.

"I might have heard that some people think he was in league with Siri-" The name slurred to a stop in Tyler's mouth. He couldn't quite say it. He kept trying but the words got lost between his teeth and his confidence as if saying the name aloud would make the man appeared before them. As if it would make the tragedy of last October real again.

"Sirius Black." Severus finished for him, brash and unafraid of the name.

Tyler nodded, and his attention dropped to the floor, but he could see Severus' attention flittering around the room as if he was looking for some evidence of the other werewolf's presence. As if he would find some crack where Sirius Black's best friend could sneak through to take the last piece of Lily Evan's away from them.

"Sev?" Tyler prompted, dragging Severus back into the conversation and away from his unjust concern. "Remus is a good guy."

"No. He is a werewolf," Severus said. "He was here wasn't he?"

"No," Tyler answered too quickly. Severus's lip curled ready to growl.

"Tyler if he was here you need to tell me," Severus insisted. "If he was working with Sirius he will be after Harry."

"He's not after Harry."

"So he has been here!?"

"I didn't say that!"

"Moss." Severus was doing his best to bore holes into Tyler's forehead with his glare.

"He wasn't working with Si- that guy," Tyler said, dumbfounded. "Remus couldn't have done that," he insisted. Remus was a decent person, a hard worker. Loyal. Tyler trusted him.

He stuffed the last quarter of bread into his mouth and hobbled to the oven.

"MOSS!"

"Sev!" Tyler countered through a mouthful of jam-covered.

"Tyler Rodrick Evans I swear on Merlin's grave if you've been sneaking that good-for-nothing-"

"I HAVEN'T!" Tyler said again. He felt eight-years-old, trying to convince his mother he hadn't eaten the last cookie. "I just don't understand why people think Remus was in on this." Tyler held Harry back as he checked the casserole. "He's never hurt a fly. He saved my life, several times, and was always nice to me, and he had nothing to gain from joining the Death Eaters."

Severus breathed in, and out. The familiar image almost made Tyler laugh out loud. He closed the oven, and waited for Severus's clipped words, "Do you think it's a little…odd… that Remus is the only one of James's friends who's still alive?"

"No." Tyler shrugged, "Why bother killing him? Si-He was probably scared of Remus because he was so good at wandy-fighting." The look Severus gave him should have melted Tyler's skin, but Tyler was to busy trying to remember the word wizards used for- "dueling. I meant wand dueling," Tyler corrected himself.

Severus must have realized he wasn't going to win the argument, so he turned and walked out of the room. Tyler expected to hear the whoosh of the floo, but instead, he heard muttering and every few moments his walls would light up with a comforting blue glow. He recognized that magic. James had put 50 wards on the house and more on the basement. Tyler looked down at Harry the boy was licking jam off his fingers and grinning madly. He must have been hungry?

"You will have to change the password on your floo," Severus said when he stomped back into the room a few minutes later. "You are going to need to invite people into your house before they can enter, and if you hear a high pitched siren at some point it means someone has broken through the security perimeter. Likely by apparating. I'll set it off when I visit, but I won't mind as I can turn it off. I've set it to alarm my wand when it goes off so I'll know if someone's broken in. Oh, wait-" Severus wandered back out of the room, and Tyler picked Harry off the floor to follow the seemingly deranged wizard around the house.

Severus cast a few more charms, and Tyler limped through three rooms before becoming too tired to continue. He leaned heavily against the bathroom doorframe where Severus was tapping his wand against the mirror.

"Severus this is ridiculous, Dumbledore put protections on this place when he dropped Harry off."

"Passive ones," Severus mumbled, sounding annoyed.

"No one is going to harm Harry."

Severus began to drag a crackling string of protective light along the wall of the house. "Not anymore at least," he said.

"Okay." Tyler groaned. "You just finish up with that, I'm going to pull the casserole from the oven. You want birthday cake or do Harry and I get all of it?"

"I'm not eating with you."

"I'll cut you a very large slice."

Severus just mumbled as he continued his work.


End file.
